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Required system storage

ArcGIS Enterprise depends on system storage to accomplish various functional requirements. The data in system storage is managed by ArcGIS, and you interact with that data only using the web service or layer.

A base deployment has required system storage to meet its minimum functional requirements. Additional capabilities of ArcGIS Enterprise may also require capability-based system storage.

For both on-premises and cloud deployments of ArcGIS Enterprise, you can create the required system storage either local to the machines running ArcGIS Enterprise components, or on network shares accessible by those machines. If you have deployed ArcGIS Enterprise in a cloud environment, you can alternatively use cloud services to provide some of the required system storage.

Relational store

The relational store is the database that your hosting server uses to store the data for hosted feature layers and more.

For both on-premises and cloud deployments, the relational store is provided by installing ArcGIS Data Store. It is always deployed in primary-standby mode and supports either one machine (primary only) or two machines (primary-standby) for high availability.

Object store

The object store is used by the hosting server to store hosted 3D layer caches, cached query responses, and more.

For either on-premises or cloud deployments, the object store can be provided by installing ArcGIS Data Store. When the object store is provided by ArcGIS Data Store, it can contain one machine or deployed in cluster mode for high availability.

For ArcGIS Enterprise deployments in the AWS or Azure cloud, you can alternatively configure a cloud storage service as the object store. The cloud storage services that are supported for providing the object store in these cloud deployments include the following:

  • Amazon S3

  • Azure Blob Storage

If you deployed ArcGIS Enterprise using the cloud tools provided by Esri, see the ArcGIS Enterprise on Amazon Web Services or ArcGIS Enterprise on Microsoft Azure documentation for instructions to configure a cloud storage service as the object store.

If you deployed ArcGIS Enterprise on AWS or Azure without using the cloud tools, see the ArcGIS API for Python documentation or ArcGIS REST API documentation for instructions.

System directories

The various system directories store information required by individual ArcGIS Enterprise software components.

  • The portal content directory is required by Portal for ArcGIS to store content saved and uploaded by users of the portal.

  • The configuration store is required by ArcGIS Server to store the essential properties of the site, including information about the machines and clusters participating in the site.

  • The server directories are required by ArcGIS Server to store caches of prerendered tiles, files needed by geoprocessing services, temporary output files, files uploaded to the ArcGIS Server site, and other information needed for managing services and database connections.

See options for system directories for more information about storage recommendations in on-premises and cloud environments.

Back up storage

To make backups of ArcGIS Enterprise components, you need a location store those backups. It is recommended that you store the backups in a separate location from the machines where ArcGIS Enterprise is running. This will ensure your backups remain available even if ArcGIS Enterprise is unavailable.

For both on-premises and cloud deployments, you can store backups using a local folder or network share. Alternatively, both on-premises and cloud deployments support using a cloud service to store an ArcGIS Enterprise backup. Because cloud storage services are both scalable and resilient, it can be beneficial to use them for this purpose to prevent the size of the backup from filling up disk space and to protect against data loss.

The ArcGIS Enterprise backup utility installs with the Portal for ArcGIS component and creates a backup of your Portal for ArcGIS deployment. The backupdatastore utility installs with the ArcGIS Data Store component and creates backups of individual data stores. Both utilities support writing backups directly to the following cloud storage locations:

  • Amazon S3

  • Azure Blob Storage

See ArcGIS Enterprise backups and ArcGIS Data Store utility reference for more information.

As with all cloud integrations, if the ArcGIS Enterprise deployment is not in the same cloud region as the cloud service used to store backups, the process to create and restore backups takes longer than it does if the deployment and backup storage locations are in the same region.

Tip:

Instead of writing backups directly to cloud storage, you can write backups to a local drive, then copy the backup files to a cloud storage location. This strategy has the advantage of reducing backup time and allowing you to use cloud storage options that aren't supported for direct writing.