Replicating to an ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8 standby deployment on Microsoft Azure does not work

Description

Running the webgisdr utility in Microsoft Azure to replicate ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8 to a standby version 2 (V2) deployment to provide geographic redundancy, does not work without new preparatory steps.

Cause

An entry in the etc\hosts file can help to direct requests to the standby deployment through the ArcGIS Enterprise public URLs. Due to configuration changes for V2 deployments on Microsoft Azure at 10.8 to ArcGIS Enterprise deployments on Microsoft Azure, there is no way to direct requests to the standby environment during a restore using an etc\hosts entry. Manual steps are required to restore ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8 V2 to a standby deployment when taking advantage of geographic redundancy as a disaster recovery option.

Solution or Workaround

Complete these steps before restoring a backup created from the primary V2 deployment. These steps ensure that requests to the standby deployment during a restore operation are routed to the machines in the standby deployment. You do not need to complete these steps for V1 deployments, even if you upgrade them to ArcGIS 10.8.

Update Portal for ArcGIS URLs

1. On the portal virtual machine in the standby ArcGIS Enterprise deployment on Azure, open a web browser and sign in to the ArcGIS Portal Directory as a member of the default administrator role in your portal organization. The ArcGIS Portal Directory URL is formatted as follows:

https://portal.domain.com:7443/arcgis/portaladmin

If the standby ArcGIS Enterprise deployment is highly available, you can open the web browser on either the primary or standby machine.

2. Click System > Properties > Update Properties.
3. On the Update System Properties dialog box, update the privatePortalURL property to point to the primary portal; for example:

https://primary.domain.com:7443/arcgis

4. Click Update Properties to apply the changes. 
5. Sign in to the Portal for ArcGIS REST endpoint (in the format https://portal.domain.com:7443/arcgis/sharing/rest) as a member of the default administrator role to update the hosting server information.
6. From the home page of the Portal for ArcGIS REST endpoint, open Portals > Self > Servers and click the Server Id for your portal's hosting server.
7. Click Update Server and type or paste the URL to one of the Server machines in the hosting server site for the Server Admin URL parameter. The URL is formatted as follows:

https://server.domain.com:6443/arcgis

8. Click Update to apply the changes.
9. Make this change for each federated server in the ArcGIS Enterprise deployment, using the respective admin URL for one of the machines in the site.
10. Validate your federated servers using the ArcGIS Portal Directory. The URL is in the format:

https://portal.domain.com:7443/arcgis/portaladmin

11. Sign in as a member of the default administrator role and navigate to Federation > Servers. Validate each of the federated server sites.

Update ArcGIS Server URLs 
Repeat the following steps for the hosting server and each federated server in the ArcGIS Enterprise deployment, including any ArcGIS Notebook Server, ArcGIS GeoEvent Server, GeoAnalytics Server, Raster Analytics, Image hosting server, or additional GIS Server sites that are federated with the deployment.

1. Sign in to the ArcGIS Server Administrator Directory as the primary site administrator or by generating and providing a Portal for ArcGIS administrator token. The ArcGIS Server Administrator Directory URL is in the format:

https://server.domain.com:6443/arcgis/admin

2. Click Security > Config and make sure the privatePortalURL property references the change made in step 3 above. If it doesn’t, follow steps 3 and 4, below.
3. In the Security > Config page, click Update and replace the value for the privatePortalURL, which should reference the fully qualified domain name of the site, to the internal URL set in step 3, in the section above. 
4. Click Update to apply the changes for this federated server site.

The settings above are to be set before you restore a backup to the standby deployment. If you promote the standby deployment to be the primary deployment, reverse the changes. Follow the steps above, but: 

• In the first procedure, Update Portal for ArcGIS URLs, step 3, instead of the internal machine URL, set the privateportalURL to the fully qualified domain name used to reach the portal. This will match the WebContextURL property.
• In step 7, set the Server Admin URL to the fully qualified domain name used to reach the ArcGIS Server site. This will match the WebContextURL property of the site under ArcGIS Server Administrator Directory > System > Properties.
• In step 2 of the second procedure, Update ArcGIS Server URLs, if the privatePortalURL in the ArcGIS Server’s Security > Config page doesn’t match the one entered in step 3 of the first procedure, Update Portal for ArcGIS URLs, replace the existing one with the fully qualified domain name used to reach the ArcGIS Server site.

If you are still encountering this problem after following these steps, please contact Esri Technical Support (for customers in the United States) or your Esri distributor (for customers outside the United States) to resolve this issue.