Failed to create the service ‘Hosted/ feature_service_name.FeatureServer’. Illegal group reference

Error Message

In an ArcGIS Enterprise deployment, administrators and users are unable to publish new hosted feature layers directly through the ArcGIS Enterprise Portal user interface via Content > New Item. Additionally, attempts to create Hosted Feature Layer Views from existing hosted services within the ArcGIS Enterprise portal fail.

ArcGIS Server Federation and the ArcGIS Relational Data Store validate successfully without errors. Furthermore, the ArcGIS Relational Data Store is in READWRITE mode.

Existing hosted feature services continue to function and render as expected. Users can successfully publish new hosted feature services from ArcGIS Pro.

In ArcGIS Server Manager logs, the following errors are received:

“Unable to read the service ‘{0}’ from the configuration store. {1} feature_service_name.FeatureServer Illegal group reference"

"Failed to create the service ‘Hosted/ feature_service_name.FeatureServer’. Illegal group reference"

Cause

ArcGIS Server does not support shared network directories that are hidden or use special characters (such as $).

Solution or Workaround

Work with IT administrators to take a deployment snapshot, unhide all ArcGIS Enterprise installation and content directories, and update network share names and path references to use standard alphanumeric characters free of special symbols like dollar signs ($).