A site is a deployment of ArcGIS Server. If you've installed ArcGIS Server on a machine for the purpose of adding it to an existing site, you have the opportunity to specify that site the first time you open ArcGIS Server Manager.
Note:
If your existing site has been configured to use HTTP only, you must add the new server machine to the site, as described in Add an ArcGIS Server machine to a site.
The Join Site operation adds a new machine to an existing ArcGIS Server site. This can be done temporarily to migrate to new machines, or more permanently to increase the resources and processing power of your server site. If you are using Join Site to migrate, the new and existing machines do not need to match, but if you intend to keep all machines in the site, it is recommended that you ensure they meet the following criteria:
- If you're creating a multiple-machine site, the new machine must be running on the same operating system platform as the other ArcGIS Server machines in the site. For example, if you have a site comprised of multiple ArcGIS Server machines, each running on Windows Server 2016 with a 3 GHz processor and 8 GB of RAM, the machine you add to the site should also have the same operating system and hardware specifications. If you are only temporarily joining machines to a site for migration purposes, their operating systems can be different.
- It must be at the same version number as the other ArcGIS Server machines in the site.
- It must have the same license applied to it as the other ArcGIS Server machines in the site.
- It must be able to read and write to the site's configuration store and server directories.
- It must be running ArcGIS Server under the same ArcGIS Server account as all the other ArcGIS Server machines in the site. This can be a domain account, or it can be a local account with a name and password that are identical on all machines. See The ArcGIS Server account to learn more about this account.
- It must be able to communicate with all the other ArcGIS Server machines in the site through the ports listed in Ports used by ArcGIS Server. This may require adjustment of firewall settings.
- It must be able to read any data referenced by services on the site. A good way to verify this is to check whether the machine has permissions to all the data storage locations registered with the site. See How to register your data with ArcGIS Server to learn more about these registered locations.
To join a machine to a site, follow the steps below.
- Open Manager. The URL to open Manager in a browser is https://gisserver.domain.com:6443/arcgis/manager, or you can use the installed shortcut.
If you're prompted for a user name and password, someone already joined this machine to an existing site.
- Click Join An Existing Site.
- Type the URL to the site you want to join. The URL usually follows the format https://gisserver.domain.com:6443/.
- Type the administrator name and password of the site you want to join. This can be the same user name and password that you used when you created the site (the primary site administrator), or it can be another ArcGIS Server user account to whom the server administrator has granted administrative privileges.
Click Next.
- Examine the configuration summary and click Finish when you are ready to join the machine to the site.
- If your site has registered Relational Data Store Types, you must restart ArcGIS Server on each newly added machine by restarting the Windows service. After restarting, ArcGIS Server on each added machine will be fully functional.
Your machine is now added to the site.
Dive-in:
When you create or join a machine to a site, logs at the Verbose level are written to <ArcGIS Server installation directory>\usr\logs\<machine name>\server. If the site creation or join fails, you can open the logs with a text editor to get more information about the problem.
Once the site creation or join is complete, the logs are moved to <ArcGIS Server installation drive>\arcgisserver\logs and the log level is set to Warning. If the ArcGIS Server account does not have permission to create or write to this folder, the site creation or joining the site will fail. If you don't want to give the ArcGIS Server account permissions to create folders on your entire drive, you can manually create this folder in advance and grant the ArcGIS Server account permissions to write to it.