Since the release of ArcGIS 9 in 2004, ArcGIS Server has continued to grow and evolve. This evolution is ongoing and evident in the latest release of the ArcGIS platform, ArcGIS 10.5, released in December 2016. With the release of any new software version, comes changes in system requirements, licensing, and functionality. The 10.5 release of ArcGIS 10.5, now known as ArcGIS Enterprise, brought a substantial number of changes to administrators and users of this vastly popular and pervasive geographic information systems software package. At the time of this writing, ArcGIS Enterprise is at version 10.5.1, a quality improvement release set loose in the wild in the summer of 2017. This book will focus on ArcGIS Enterprise version 10.5.1. We will refer to both 10.5 and 10.5.1 versions, as many of the newest features were released at 10.5.

To fully understand how to install ArcGIS Enterprise, it is first important to know the structure of ArcGIS Enterprise, what it is and isn't, its different components, and, new to ArcGIS Enterprise at 10.5, server roles. This chapter will help you do just that; you will learn what ArcGIS Enterprise 10.5.1 is, how it differs from previous versions of ArcGIS, and how to install and initially configure the key components of ArcGIS Enterprise.

By the end of this chapter, you will be comfortable with the structure of ArcGIS Enterprise and capable of confidently installing and configuring it in your own environment.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics: