A quick tour of Cloud Builder

ArcGIS Server Cloud Builder on Amazon Web Services helps you build and maintain an ArcGIS Server site in Amazon EC2. It is a lightweight desktop application downloadable by anyone who has purchased ArcGIS for Server.

When you build a site in Amazon EC2, there are various components that you have to create, connect, and maintain, such as an EC2 instance, a security group, a key pair file, an Elastic Load Balancer (ELB). You can use Cloud Builder, which hides the complexity of assembling and administering your site.

This topic briefly introduces the things you can do with Cloud Builder.

Building a new site

Cloud Builder helps you build a complete ArcGIS Server site in Amazon EC2. The site can be simple or complex. It can have one GIS server or many GIS servers. It can have an enterprise geodatabase attached. It can expand or shrink in response to CPU utilization.

When you create a site using Cloud Builder, you provide a license file and your primary site administrator credentials for ArcGIS Server. This allows Cloud Builder to authorize ArcGIS Server for you and create a site. When Cloud Builder has finished creating the site, it gives you a link you can use to access Manager. You can immediately begin publishing services to the site.

See Building an ArcGIS server site on Amazon EC2 to get started.

Building a custom site

Many cloud users like to save their own set of services and data to a machine image that they can use to launch identical instances in the future. This is helpful when scaling out a site with more machines or when replacing a machine that has been taken offline. Using the Cloud Builder, you can create site templates that preserve the state of your machine for future use. When launching future sites, you can use the template to ensure that your services and data are configured from the beginning.

See Creating a site template.

Maintaining a site

Using Cloud Builder, you can easily stop or start your site. Stopping a site is like turning off the power when you go home at night. A stopped site incurs fewer charges than a started site, and you might choose to stop your site on nights, weekends, or other off-hours. This can be a good way to cut costs if you are not running mission-critical applications or if your site is just used for development or testing purposes.

See Stopping and starting your site.

Backing up a site

Cloud Builder allows you to make a backup that preserves the current state of your site, including services, apps, and data. If your site becomes corrupted or experiences other problems, you can use the backup to return to a working state.

See Making a backup of your site.

12/29/2014