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Integrate ArcGIS Server with ArcGIS Enterprise

The backbone of geospatial content in ArcGIS Enterprise is your GIS web services powered by ArcGIS Server.

Integrating ArcGIS Server with ArcGIS Enterprise enables efficient, powerful workflows for your organization. There are three ways that ArcGIS Server can be used with ArcGIS Enterprise:

  • You can add services from stand-alone ArcGIS Server sites as items to your ArcGIS Enterprise or ArcGIS Online organization.

  • You can federate and integrate ArcGIS Server with ArcGIS Enterprise. Doing so leverages the security and sharing models and provides a primary location for users to access, visualize, and work with geospatial content, as well as helps you to transform your ArcGIS Server services into information products and securely share content with your users and stakeholders.

  • You can assign a federated ArcGIS Server site to act as your organization's hosting server, allowing users to publish data and maps to a wider audience as web services. This is required for a base deployment of ArcGIS Enterprise.

The following are the three approaches to ArcGIS Enterprise integration.

Add secure services

You can add services from stand-alone ArcGIS Server sites as items to your organization, allowing users to easily find them and add them to web maps and apps.

The services can come from any ArcGIS Server site you can access through the service URL, though you must configure the organization to trust the server certificate from the organization where the service originates. Registering services is the most loosely coupled way in which a server can be integrated with ArcGIS Enterprise.

When you add a secure service as an item, the life spans of the service and the item are not connected. In other words, if the underlying service goes away, you are responsible for deleting the item from the corresponding organization.

See Connect to secure services for more information.

Federate a server

Federating an ArcGIS Server site integrates the security and sharing models of your organization with one or more ArcGIS Server sites.

When an ArcGIS Server site is federated, users can create hosted layers and perform spatial analysis on content in Map Viewer, and security and access are controlled at the web tier.

Federated ArcGIS Server sites are designated with a particular role. As an example, ArcGIS Image Server can be designated as an image hosting or raster analytics server, to give members access to their analysis functions.

When you federate a server, access and authorization to server resources are controlled by ArcGIS Enterprise. This means the following occur:

  • You access ArcGIS Server using organization members—ArcGIS Server users and roles are replaced by those of the organization. Member credentials, whether they be through the organization's built-in identity store or an external identity provider, are used to sign in to ArcGIS Server Manager. By consolidating these members, you clarify the administration of GIS resources and ensure a convenient sign-in experience when accessing secured ArcGIS Server resources.

  • Access to ArcGIS Server services is controlled by the organization's sharing model—Every ArcGIS Server service you publish to your federated server is automatically treated and shared as an item in the organization. The sharing model allows you to keep the service private to its publisher or shared with one or more groups of users. Alternatively, you can share the item with your whole organization (any signed-in user) or enable anonymous access so that anyone can view it. This sharing model gives you an extra level of granularity when defining access to your ArcGIS Server services.

You can have multiple federated ArcGIS Server sites. For example, you might have ArcGIS GIS Server, ArcGIS Image Server, and ArcGIS Video Server sites federated with your organization. All federated ArcGIS Server sites are accessed using organization accounts, not ArcGIS Server accounts.

For more information, see Federate an ArcGIS Server site.

Configure a hosting server

ArcGIS Enterprise requires that a federated ArcGIS GIS Server site is configured as the hosting server. Your organization can have one hosting server, which enables capabilities such as publishing hosted layers and performing analysis in Map Viewer.

A hosting server is the highest level of integration that can be achieved between an organization and a GIS Server site.

When users publish hosted feature layers, the data is copied to the relational store. When you delete a hosted feature layer item, the underlying feature service is deleted from the hosting server, and the data is deleted from the relational store.

See Configure a hosting server to learn how to set up a hosting server.