Organizations may want to migrate an existing ArcGIS Enterprise organization from one machine (or set of machines) to another. Among the reasons to do this are to migrate to newer hardware or a newer operating system. There are a few common methods to conduct this type of migration, including the following:
- The Join Site operation
- The Web GIS Disaster Recovery (WebGISDR) tool
To replace a machine in your deployment without losing content or interrupting service, use the Join Site operation to migrate machines running Portal for ArcGIS and ArcGIS Server. You can use a similar workflow for machines running ArcGIS Data Store.
In the following workflows, content directories are moved from the local drive on your old machine to a shared location on the network. The Join Site operation is performed to connect the new machine, and the old machine is unregistered. The old content directory is then moved to the local drive of the new machine, and any relevant URLs are redirected to the new machine.
Before migrating your deployment using the Join Site operation, ensure you have considered the following:
- Each workflow below involves temporarily joining your old and new machines in a multiple-machine configuration. While machines running different OS versions (such as Windows Server 2016) can be run in the same software component, machines running different operating systems (such as Windows and Linux) cannot coexist in this way.
- Due to the dependency on shared storage between machines that participate in the same site, this strategy should only be used if the machine you're migrating to is within the same data center as the original machine. If you are migrating to machines in a separate data center, consider using the WebGISDR tool.
This method can be used for single- or multiple-machine deployments that are hosted on-premises or in the cloud. Review Migration strategies for more information.
Migrate a machine running Portal for ArcGIS
In this workflow, your new machine replaces the old machine hosting Portal for ArcGIS.
- Follow the steps in Change the portal content directory to move the portal content directory from the old machine to a shared network location. Copy the content from the old location to the new before changing the directory location.
The content directory remains in the shared location until the old machine is unregistered from the site.
- Install Portal for ArcGIS on the new machine, but do not create a portal. Use the same installation directory and location for the default content directory as your original Portal for ArcGIS machine.
- Sign in to the new machine's ArcGIS Portal Administrator Directory, click Join Site, and provide the existing portal URL (in the format https://portalhost.domain.com:7443) and the credentials to its primary site administrator account.
Both the old and new machines are joined to the portal.
- On the Administrator Directory home page, click Machines > unregister. On the subsequent operation page, select the old machine's name from the drop-down menu, and click Unregister to remove the old machine from the portal.
- Move the portal content directory from the shared network location to the local drive of the new machine, mirroring the workflow in step 1.
- If your deployment is using a front-end proxy or load balancer, and the privatePortalURL property in your portal's system properties still points to the old portal machine's URL, update the property. Click System > Properties > Update Properties and modify the privatePortalURL property.
Migrate a machine running ArcGIS Server
In this workflow, your new machine replaces the old machine in your ArcGIS Server site.
To preserve content and configuration settings, the server directories and configuration store are first migrated from the local drive of the old machine to a shared location on your network, and then to the local drive of the new machine. If you already have a multiple-machine ArcGIS Server site and these folders are located on a network share, omit steps 1 and 5 from the following workflow.
- Move the server directories and configuration store for the server from the old machine to a shared network location.
This can be done from ArcGIS Server Manager. The directories and configuration store remain in the shared location until the old machine is unregistered from the site.
- Install ArcGIS Server on the new machine, but do not create a server site. Use the same installation directory as your original ArcGIS Server machine.
- Sign in to the new machine's ArcGIS Server Administrator Directory, click Join Site, and provide the URL and initial administrator account credentials for the old machine's ArcGIS Server site.
Both machines are joined in the site.
- On the administrator directory home page, browse to machines, click the old machine's name, and click the unregister operation. Confirm the operation on the next page to unregister the old machine from the site.
- Move the server directories and configuration store from the shared location to the local drive of the new machine, mirroring the workflow in step 1.
- Update the administrator URL for the federated server. Sign in to the Portal REST endpoint as an administrator. From your user page, click the Org ID link. In the Child Resources section, click Servers, and select the Server ID of your federated server. Click Update Server. On the dialog box, provide the fully qualified ArcGIS Server administrative URL of your new machine. Click Update.
- Sign in to the new machine's ArcGIS Server Administrator Directory and browse to Security > Config. Verify that the privatePortalURL property in the JSON within the portalProperties section matches what is configured in the portal. If not, click Update and modify the privatePortalURL value to match.
Migrate a machine running ArcGIS Data Store
In this workflow, your new machine replaces the old machine hosting your relational ArcGIS Data Store.
- Install ArcGIS Data Store on your new machine. Use the same installation directory as your original ArcGIS Data Store machine.
- Register the new relational data store as a standby machine with the portal's hosting ArcGIS Server site using the ArcGIS Data Store configuration wizard.
- Sign in to the ArcGIS Server Administrator Directory (in the URL format https://gisserver.domain.com:6443/arcgis/admin) and browse to data > items > /enterpriseDatabases > [ArcGIS Data Store] > machines. Select the new machine and click makePrimary.
The new machine is promoted to the primary role and the old machine is downgraded to a standby role.
- Click [ArcGIS Data Store] > machines, click the old machine (now standby), and choose remove.
The new machine is the sole item in your ArcGIS Data Store.