As a follow up to my Reasons to Migrate from AGOL to ArcGIS Enterprise article. Today I am going to build off that and discuss some things I’ve come across migrating from ArcGIS Online to ArcGIS Enterprise. Depending on how tight of a ship you ran in ArcGIS Online and the amount of content accumulated over the years, this can either be fairly mundane to downright terrifying.
Architectural Differences
The biggest pain point of moving from AGOL to Enterprise is because of their architectural differences. AGOL is SaaS and operates as such. Enterprise is on your own infrastructure whether that’s physical, vm’s, or cloud. The biggest headache tends to be moving data and some of the subtle capability differences between Enterprise and AGOL is there tends to be a lag in Enterprise release versions and AGOL. In AGOL your hosted data lives in ESRI’s Data Store, but in Enterprise it’s best practice to have your authoritative data live in an Enterprise Geodatabase in an RDBMS such as SQL Server. Here is another article I released about ArcGIS Data Store vs Enterprise Geodatabase for a more in-depth explanation of the two.
Going from your Data Store creates a significant change for your workflows. Who will be your geodatabase admins, data owners, and publishers? Getting your users to understand that now the Data Store is just a personal workspace. It’s not intended to house any data you’re afraid of losing.
Migrating Users and Content
One of the first questions I routinely get asked is, “Can I migrate my existing AGOL Users.” Well, kinda/sorta. You can create an equivalent user in your new Enterprise and then migrate, or recreate, their AGOL content in Enterprise. More often than not what happens for many organizations is that they have a period of time where the Enterprise is used for new projects while the current projects in AGOL wind down. It’s then decided what from AGOL needs to get moved to Enterprise and what can be archived.
Fortunately, GEO Jobe has the ABC’s for all things Enterprise and Online. Our Backup My Org product will make the migration from AGOL to your Enterprise a little less daunting.
Enterprise Services
Nervous about migrating from AGOL to an Enterprise, then we’re here to help! Our Enterprise team has done multiple deployments in a variety of environments while adhering to the client’s specific business requirements. Our Enterprise and GIS Services offers a variety of packages depending on your needs. Reach out today for a free consultation to discuss your game plan at connect@geo-jobe.com or call 1-844-GEO-JOBE.
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