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Upgrade an ArcGIS Notebook Server site on AWS

ArcGIS 11.3  | |  Help archive

How you upgrade depends on how and when you created the ArcGIS Notebook Server site on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Before you upgrade

No matter which upgrade method you use, review the following information before you upgrade your deployment:

  • You must obtain a new license file to upgrade to 11.3.
  • Make a backup of the ArcGIS Notebook Server site before upgrading.
  • For a single machine ArcGIS Notebook Server site, you must move the ArcGIS Notebook Server site's workspace directory.
  • You must upgrade the ArcGIS Enterprise portal with which ArcGIS Notebook Server is federated before upgrading the ArcGIS Notebook Server site.
  • If you upgrade using manual upgrade procedures or a Chef script, you must remove the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances in the ArcGIS Notebook Server site from the AWS Auto Scaling group (if it is in one) before you can upgrade the site. Once upgraded, you cannot put the instances back in the Auto Scaling group. Therefore, you must manually add instances to or delete instances from the ArcGIS Notebook Server site when needed, and you cannot use the Lambda functions created using Amazon Web Services CloudFormation templates provided by Esri to stop and start these instances.

    If you don't remove the instances or if you put the instances back in the Auto Scaling group after you upgrade, instances added to the ArcGIS Notebook Server site by the Auto Scaling group will be running the old version of the software. You cannot have multiple versions of ArcGIS Server in a site, so this can corrupt your deployment.

Upgrade using manual upgrade procedures

The manual upgrade procedure for a ArcGIS Notebook Server site on AWS is similar to upgrading one on-premises. The difference on AWS is that, if the ArcGIS Notebook Server site Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instances are deployed in an AWS Auto Scaling group, you must remove them from the Auto Scaling group before you upgrade.

Follow these steps to remove all EC2 instances from the Auto Scaling group.

  1. Sign in to AWS Management Console and find the Auto Scaling group associated with your ArcGIS Notebook Server site.

    The Auto Scaling group includes the name of the CloudFormation stack. You can also open instance management for the group and confirm the EC2 instances in the group participate in your site.

  2. Change the minimum capacity and maximum capacity properties of the stack's Auto Scaling group to 0.
  3. Remove all the EC2 instances from the Auto Scaling group.
  4. Change the desired capacity property of the Auto Scaling group to 0.

Once you remove all EC2 instances, delete the Auto Scaling group to prevent anyone from adding the instances back after the ArcGIS Notebook Server site is upgraded.

Now you can follow instructions in the ArcGIS Notebook Server installation guide to upgrade the ArcGIS Notebook Server site. Read the instructions specific to the operating system on your EC2 instances:

Upgrade using Chef scripts

If you created the ArcGIS Notebook Server site using a 10.8 or 10.8.1 Esri Amazon Web Services CloudFormation template, you can upgrade using Chef scripts.

Remove the ArcGIS Notebook Server EC2 instances from the AWS Auto Scaling group. Next, upgrade the ArcGIS Notebook Server site, and then upgrade the site's ArcGIS Web Adaptor.

Adjust the Auto Scaling group settings

Follow these steps to remove all EC2 instances from the Auto Scaling group.

  1. Sign in to AWS Management Console and find the Auto Scaling group associated with your ArcGIS Notebook Server site.

    The Auto Scaling group includes the name of the CloudFormation stack. You can also open instance management for the group and confirm the EC2 instances in the group participate in your site.

  2. Change the minimum capacity and maximum capacity properties of the stack's Auto Scaling group to 0.
  3. Remove all the EC2 instances from the Auto Scaling group.
  4. Change the desired capacity property of the Auto Scaling group to 0.

Once you remove all EC2 instances, delete the Auto Scaling group to prevent anyone from adding the instances back after the ArcGIS Notebook Server site is upgraded.

Upgrade ArcGIS Notebook Server

  1. As the ubuntu user, make a secure shell protocol (SSH) connection to the first EC2 instance in the ArcGIS Notebook Server site.
  2. Use one of the following commands to download and install a supported Chef or Cinc client.

    See the ArcGIS Cookbook compatibility matrix for supported versions. Replace the version number text in the following statements with the client version you install, for example 18.30.

    • Chef client: sudo curl -L https://omnitruck.chef.io/install.sh | sudo bash -s -- -v <version_number>
    • Cinc client: sudo curl -L https://omnitruck.cinc.sh/install.sh | sudo bash -s -- -v <version_number>
  3. Download the 11.3 versions of the following installation files from your account in My Esri and upload them to the /opt/software/archives directory on the EC2 instance.

    • ArcGIS_Notebook_Server_Linux_113_190340.tar.gz
    • ArcGIS_Notebook_Server_Samples_Data_Linux_113_190346.tar.gz
    • ArcGIS_Notebook_Docker_Advanced_113_190270.tar.gz
    • ArcGIS_Notebook_Docker_Standard_113_190269.tar.gz
    • ArcGIS_Web_Adaptor_Java_Linux_113_190319.tar.gz

  4. Obtain an ArcGIS Notebook Server 11.3 authorization file and place it in a local folder on the EC2 instance or a file share that you can access from the EC2 instance.
  5. Download the ArcGIS Cookbook version 5.0.0 (arcgis-5.0.0-cookbooks.tar.gz) to the EC2 instance, untar and unzip the file, and place the files contents in the /opt/chef directory.
  6. The notebook-server.json file you will use to upgrade is included in the cookbook you downloaded and extracted in the previous step.
  7. Change directories to /opt/chef/templates/arcgis-notebooks/11.3/linux, open the notebook-server.json file in a text editor, and modify the following parameters:

    • Set the installation directory to /home.
      "arcgis" : {
          "notebook_server": {
              "install_dir": "/home"
    • Specify the location where you placed the ArcGIS Notebook Server authorization file.
      "arcgis" : {
          "notebook_server": {
              "authorization_file": "/<folder>/<subfolder>",
    • Set the username and password for the ArcGIS Notebook Server site administrator:
      "arcgis" : {
          "notebook_server": {
      	       "admin_username": "<username>",
              "admin_password": "<password>",
    • Set the root server directory location to /net/FILESERVER/gisdata/notebookserver/directories. You must replace FILESERVER with the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the file server node in the default text.
      "arcgis" : {
          "notebook_server": {
          "directories_root": "/net/FILESERVER/gisdata/notebookserver/directories",
    • Set the ArcGIS Notebook Server workspace directory location to /net/FILESERVER/gisdata/notebookserver/directories/arcgisworkspace. You must replace FILESERVER with the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the file server node in the default text.
      "arcgis" : {
          "notebook_server": {
          "workspace": "/net/FILESERVER/gisdata/notebookserver/directories/arcgisworkspace",
    • Set the connection string for the location of the ArcGIS Notebook Server configuration directory to /net/FILESERVER/gisdata/notebookserver/config-store. You must replace FILESERVER with the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the file server node in the default text.
      "arcgis" : {
          "notebook_server": {
          "config_store_connection_string": "/net/FILESERVER/gisdata/notebookserver/config-store",
    • Set the log directory to /home/arcgis/notebookserver/usr/logs.
      "arcgis" : {
          "notebook_server": {
          "log_dir": "/home/arcgis/notebookserver/usr/logs",

  8. Save and close the notebook-server.json file.
  9. As the ubuntu user, change the directory to /opt/chef and run the following command: sudo chef-client -z -j /opt/chef/templates/arcgis-notebooks/11.3/linux/notebook-server.json.
  10. If there is more than one EC2 instance in the ArcGIS Notebook Server site, make an SSH connection to the next EC2 instance and repeat steps 2 through 8 until all instances are upgraded.

When you finish upgrading ArcGIS Notebook Server on all the EC2 instances in the site, upgrade ArcGIS Web Adaptor.

Upgrade ArcGIS Web Adaptor

Use the notebook-server-webadaptor.json file, which is also included in the cookbook you downloaded in step 5 in the previous section, to upgrade the ArcGIS Notebook Server site's ArcGIS Web Adaptor.

  1. Open the notebook-server-webadaptor.json file in a text editor and modify the following parameters:

    • Set the location of the PKSC12 keystore file (.pfx) with SSL certificate for Apache Tomcat.
      "arcgis" : {
          "tomcat": {
          "keystore_file": "/<folder>/<subfolder>/<file name>.pfx",
    • Set the password for keystore file with SSL certificate for Tomcat.
      "arcgis" : {
          "tomcat": {
          "keystore_password": "<password>"
    • Set the username and password for the ArcGIS Notebook Server site administrator:
      "arcgis" : {
          "notebook_server": {
      	       "admin_username": "<username>",
              "admin_password": "<password>",

  2. Save and close the notebook-server-webadaptor.json file.
  3. As the ubuntu user, change the directory to /opt/chef and run the following command: chef-client -z -j /opt/chef/templates/arcgis-notebooks/11.3/linux/notebook-server-webadaptor.json.

Upgrade using a CloudFormation template

If you used a 10.9, 10.9.1, 11.0, 11.1, or 11.2 deployment CloudFormation template provided by Esri to create an ArcGIS Notebook Server site, you can use the corresponding 11.3 upgrade template to upgrade it.

The following table lists corresponding deployment and upgrade templates and provides links to instructions for using the upgrade templates.

10.9, 10.9.1, 11.0, 11.1, or 11.2 deployment template11.3 upgrade templateInstructions to use upgrade template

arcgis-notebook-server-singlemachine.template.json

arcgis-notebook-server-singlemachine-upgrade.template.json

Upgrade a single machine ArcGIS Notebook Server site using CloudFormation

arcgis-notebook-server-ha.template.json

arcgis-notebook-server-ha-upgrade.template.json

Upgrade a multiple machine ArcGIS Notebook Server site using CloudFormation