Creating a site template
The instructions below explain how to create a site template using ArcGIS Server Cloud Builder on Amazon Web Services. You can later use the template to launch identical sites.
- Log in to ArcGIS Server Cloud Builder on Amazon Web Services and create a site according to the following guidelines:
Create the site in the region where you'll be using the template. Templates are region-specific; they can only launch sites in the region where they were created.
If there's any possibility that your template will be used to launch multiple machine sites, create the site with two instances. One of these instances will become the image for the site server (the GIS server containing the configuration store and the server directories) and the other will become the image for the additional GIS servers. For example, if you are hosting data and web apps on your site, you might want to configure these on the site server only, and configure the additional GIS servers without the web apps and data.
See Building an ArcGIS Server site on Amazon EC2 if you need help creating the site.
- Log in to the EC2 instances in your site and use the operating system tools to change the administrator password to something you can remember. This password will be applied to any site created with the template.
- Configure any services, applications, or third-party software that you want to have on the instances. You can also reset the ArcGIS Server account password.
If you used two instances, both the site server (SITEHOST) and the additional GIS server are saved in the template. When you create a site with this template, the resulting site server is launched from the site server image, and all the additional GIS servers are launched from the additional GIS server image.
Always reset the password of the ArcGIS Server account on SITEHOST first, and then reset the password on the other instances in your site. See Taking ownership of the ArcGIS Server account for more information.
When preparing to create a template, one thing you might want to do with the additional GIS server is remove the default attached Elastic Block Store (EBS) volume or replace it with something smaller. This reduces the storage costs you have to pay if you launch many GIS servers from this template.
You can tell which instance is the site server by examining the instance names in the AWS Management Console.
If you prepare and save just one instance in your template and you launch a multiple machine site from that template, the additional GIS servers (beyond the site server) are created using the basic ArcGIS Server AMIs.
- In ArcGIS Server Cloud Builder on Amazon Web Services, click the Templates tab.
- Click Create Template.
- Choose your site from the drop-down list and type a name and description for the template.
- Click Finish.
This begins the creation of your template, which can take some time. It's recommended that you wait at least 30 minutes before attempting to use your template.
- If you plan on sharing this template with other accounts and you also plan on keeping the parent site up and running, change the administrator password of the instances in the parent site.
To create a site using this template, see Using a template to create a site.
You can delete your template by clicking the Templates tab, and then clicking the Delete button next to your template name. If you have shared the template with other Amazon accounts, they will no longer be able to build sites with it.