Determine primary and standby machines in a highly available Portal for ArcGIS deployment (Windows)

Summary

In a highly available Portal for ArcGIS deployment, administrators may need to determine which portal machine is acting as primary or standby when troubleshooting replication or synchronization issues. Highly available Portal deployments rely on PostgreSQL replication between machines. When replication or synchronization issues occur, validating backend role assignment helps confirm which machine is acting as primary or standby.

Use the following workflow when

• Portal machines appear out of sync or report conflicting roles
• High availability state is unclear during troubleshooting
• Administrators need to verify which machine is primary and which is standby

Procedure

1. Remote desktop to a portal machine.
2. Check the database user.
   1. In File Explorer, navigate to C:\arcgisportal\db\pg_hba.conf.
   2. Open the file and check the database user.

Note:
If the username is not consistent for all local connections, use the one associated with 127.0.0.1/32.

3. Open Command Prompt. 
4. In Command Prompt, navigate to C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Portal\framework\runtime\pgsql\bin.
5. Run the command below, replacing <database_user> with the username retrieved in step 2.

psql.exe -U <database_user> -d gwdb -p 7654 -c "select pg_is_in_recovery();"

Note:
This command is read only. It does not modify portal data.

Note:
'-p 7654' refers to the PostgreSQL port.

Note:
This command is written for Windows, which does not require ./ before psql.exe.

6. Enter the database password when prompted.
7. Interpret the output.
   • If the output is f (false), the machine is the primary machine.
   • If the output is t (true), the machine is the standby machine.

8. If the primary and standby roles are incorrect or inconsistent, follow established highly available portal recovery procedures or contact Esri Support for assistance. For more information, refer to the following articles:
   • Portal for ArcGIS: Configure a highly available portal
   • Portal for ArcGIS: Configure highly available ArcGIS Enterprise