You can configure one of your federated GIS Server sites to be a hosting server for your portal to allow portal members to do the following:
- Publish hosted tile layers to the portal.
- Publish hosted feature layers to the portal.
- Publish hosted WFS layers to the portal.
- Publish scene layers to the portal (ArcGIS Data Store tile cache data store required).
- Share layers and maps from ArcGIS Maps for Office (ArcGIS Data Store relational data store required).
- Add a zipped shapefile, CSV file, or GPS Exchange Format file to the portal map viewer.
- Batch geocode addresses from a CSV file.
- Perform feature analysis or big data analytics in the portal map viewer or through Insights for ArcGIS or ArcGIS Pro (ArcGIS Data Store relational data store required).
- Perform raster analysis from the portal map viewer or ArcGIS Pro (ArcGIS Data Store relational data store required)
Before you can specify a federated server as your portal's hosting server, it must have a data store.
Set up a data store
Hosting servers require a managed database to store data for the hosted feature layers published to the portal. You can either install ArcGIS Data Store and create a relational data store registered with your GIS Server (making the relational data store the GIS Server site's managed database), or you can create an enterprise geodatabase and register it as the GIS Server site's managed database through ArcGIS Server Manager or ArcMap. When users publish hosted feature layers to your portal, the data will be copied to the data store you have registered.
Use ArcGIS Data Store
ArcGIS Data Store is a separate installation available with ArcGIS Enterprise that lets you set up and maintain data stores for hosted web layers you publish to Portal for ArcGIS. For a GIS Server site to qualify as a hosting server, create a relational data store.
To use a relational data store with your portal's hosting server, run the ArcGIS Data Store installation, and create a relational data store registered with your portal's hosting server. See An overview of ArcGIS Data Store configuration and its related topics for instructions.
Register a managed database
You can configure your own enterprise geodatabase to use as the managed data store. You would only do this in the following situations:
- You don't need the functionality that ArcGIS Data Store provides.
- You only need to publish a small number of hosted feature layers to your portal.
- You have a database administrator at your site who can set up and maintain your geodatabase.
- You want to use a specific relational database management system to store your geodatabase, or you want to customize the geodatabase.
To register a managed database, you need the following:
- An enterprise geodatabase to be used as the managed database.
- A database management system client installed on the GIS Server machine.
- A login or user with privileges to create data in the geodatabase; this user will be the one connecting from GIS Server to store the data copied to the managed database.
- A database connection file (.sde) containing the information required to connect to the enterprise geodatabase.
- If you will use ArcMap to create the .sde file or register the managed database, the database management system client must also be installed on the ArcMap machine.
For more information on how to register a managed database, see the topic in the ArcGIS Server help specific to your database management system:
Specify the server as your portal's hosting server
Once your federated GIS Server has a data store, you can register it as the portal's hosting server.
- Sign in to the portal website as an administrator and browse to My Organization > Edit Settings > Servers.
- From the Hosting Server section of the page, click the drop-down list and choose one of the GIS Server sites you have federated with the portal. If you have added multiple GIS Server sites to your portal, only one can be designated as the hosting server.
- Click Save.
You can now publish hosted web layers to the portal using the portal website, ArcMap, or ArcGIS Pro.
Items for each of the services appear in My Content in the portal website for your portal organization.
The services that power these items appear in a folder named Hosted, which you will see when you log in to your GIS Server site from Manager.
If you have not already done so, you should now configure utility services for your portal.