Activating ArcGIS Server on Amazon EC2

You can get started working on the Amazon cloud by deploying an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) that already has ArcGIS Server installed and configured. You deploy this AMI on a freshly created EC2 instance, which is a virtual machine running on Amazon's cloud.

The ArcGIS AMI includes the following:

• ArcGIS Desktop
• Microsoft SQL Server Express
• IIS 7
• ArcGIS Server for the Microsoft .NET Framework
• ArcGIS Server home page with links to Manager, the Services Directory, and help

The ArcGIS Server 10 AMIs are available in the Virginia, Northern California, Ireland, Singapore, Tokyo, Oregon, and Sao Paulo regions. The latter two became available at Service Pack 4.

Follow the steps below to deploy the ArcGIS Server AMI on an EC2 instance:

Steps:

1. Open a Web browser to the AWS Management Console.
2. Click Sign in to the AWS Console and sign in with your Amazon user name and password. Not all existing Amazon accounts are able to access EC2 instances. Contact your system administrator or Amazon if you are unsure about the account to use in this step.
3. Once you are signed in, click the Amazon EC2 tab and click Instances.
4. From the Region dropdown, choose the AWS region in which you want to work.

   Regions represent the AWS data centers available throughout the world. You can use regions to get your deployment closer to customers or to meet legal requirements. Pricing varies among the regions.

5. Click Launch Instance.
6. If prompted to select the wizard type, choose Classic Wizard and click Continue.
7. Click the Community AMIs tab and search for ESRI.
8. Find the ESRI ArcGIS Server 10.0 AMI and click its Select button. This AMI should have been shared with your account by ESRI Customer Service.
9. Choose values for Number of Instances, Availability Zone, and Instance Type. For a simple test deployment, you can leave the defaults for all these choices.
10. Choose Launch Instances or Request Spot Instances and click Continue.

    Spot instances allow you to "name your own price" for an instance, although the instance may not always be available at the price you choose. Spot instances are useful for certain types of jobs that can run on off hours and be easily stopped and resumed. In most deployments you will not use spot instances.

11. Choose your advanced instance options, such as values for Kernel ID, RAM Disk ID, and so on. To prevent accidental termination of your instance, you might want to enable Termination Protection, and/or change the Shutdown Behavior to Stop.

    When you finish selecting advanced options, click Continue.

12. Optionally, configure tags for your instance that will help you quickly identify and categorize your instance. Each tag consists of a key/value pair. A Name tag is already partly configured for you, so if you want to assign a name to your instance, type it in the Value box to the right of the Name key.

    When you are done setting tags, click Continue.

13. At this point you need to create a key pair, which you will later use to retrieve the administrator password of the EC2 instance. Click Create a new Key Pair, then do the following:
    1. Type a name for the key pair.
    2. Click Create & Download your Key Pair.
    3. Allow your browser to download the file, which has a .pem extension. Save it in a safe place.
    4. Click Continue.

    When you create subsequent instances, you can click Choose from your existing Key Pairs and select the key pair you just created.

14. Choose Create a new security group and type a name (for example ArcGISServer) and a description for this group (for example Security group for ArcGIS Server EC2 instances).
15. Define the following allowed connections for your security group, clicking Add Rule to add each rule to the table:

    Rule type	Port	Source network (IPv4 CIDR)
    RDP	3389 (applied automatically)	<IP address range of machines allowed to connect through remote desktop>
    HTTP	80 (applied automatically)	0.0.0.0/0 or a more limited range of IPs as defined by your IT administrator

    Note:

    Your organization's IT staff may have different requirements or rules for opening ports on your EC2 instances that could affect what you enter above. Check with your system administrator if you're unsure of the ports that you're permitted to open or the IP addresses that you should use.

    The above are basic rules that allow you to log into the instance and test that your services are running. After you create the instance, you can refine the above rules. See Common security group configurations to learn how to configure security groups for ArcGIS Server EC2 instances and enterprise geodatabase EC2 instances.

    When you're finished adding these rules, click Continue.

16. Click Launch.

    It will take a few minutes to launch the instance. While the instance is launching, its status is shown as pending in the MyInstances panel of the AWS Management Console. Once the instance has finished launching, its status is shown as started, and you have a running EC2 instance for which you will incur charges. You may need to click Refresh to determine if your instance has finished launching.

    For several minutes after you launch or start an EC2 instance, you may notice that you cannot log in even though the instance appears started in the AWS Management Console. It takes a few minutes for the instance and ArcGIS Server to be completely configured.

    To determine whether your instance is ready to accept a connection, right-click the instance in the AWS Management Console and click Get System Log. When you first launch or start the instance you will see a blank log screen when you do this. On a healthy EC2 instance you should see the message "Windows is ready to use" if you check the log a few minutes later. To allow time for ArcGIS Server to configure itself, you should not attempt to connect to your EC2 instance until at least 5 minutes after the system log reports the message "Windows is Ready to use", although this time can vary based on the health of Amazon EC2.

    See Administering your Amazon EC2 machine with Remote Desktop for additional instructions about logging into your instance.

    Tip:

    Once your instances are no longer needed, stop or terminate them to avoid unnecessary charges. When you terminate an instance, all data and software on it is lost and cannot be recovered. However, you can stop and start an instance without losing data. You can right-click the status of an instance to see a menu that allows you to stop, start, or terminate the instance.

Your EC2 instance is now ready for you to log in using Windows Remote Desktop.