If publishers need to access data in shared folders to publish web services that reference data in those folders, the organization administrator must configure shared folder locations for the organization. These shared folders can contain data for publishing, or organization members can add their own subfolders to the shared folders and add those subfolders to the organization as folder data stores.
For example, you can set the following folder paths for data storage when you create the organization /net/enterprisedata and /net/sales. Organization members who have privileges to create content and register data stores can add subfolders to those two locations—such as /net/enterprisedata/research, /net/enterprisedata/research/projecta, and /net/sales/department1—add their data to those subfolders, and add the subfolders as folder data store items to the organization.
All nodes in the deployment must have access to the folders and subfolders that are added to the organization as data stores. If you do not know how to provide the nodes in the ArcGIS Enterprise deployment access to the folder locations, contact your IT staff for assistance.
As the organization administrator, you can set folder storage locations when you create the organization (the recommended method), or add folder data store items after the organization is created. Adding shared folders after the organization is created causes system and utility services to restart. ArcGIS Enterprise cannot be used while these services restart; therefore, you should add folders when creating the organization to avoid this disruption.
Adding folders when creating an organization
Esri recommends that you plan ahead and shared folder data locations to the organization when you create the ArcGIS Enterprise organization. This allows organization members who have privileges to create content and register data stores to add their own subfolders and data to that location and create folder data store items. When the folder data store items are shared with organization members who have privileges to publish web services, those members can publish the data in the subfolders from ArcGIS Pro to ArcGIS Enterprise.
For example, if you set /net/enterprisedata as a data storage folder when you create the organization, another member can add a subfolder to that location—/net/enterprisedata/projecta—and add the subfolder as a folder data store item to the organization. The member who adds the data store item must share the item to allow other members to access and publish the data in the subfolder.
By adding shared folder data locations before anyone is using the deployment, you avoid the system and utility service restarts that occur when a new folder path is added to the organization as a data store. However, this only adds the folder to the organization; when publishing from an ArcGIS client, such as ArcGIS Pro, the publisher must register the folder as a data source in the client.
Adding folders after the organization exists
If additional folder locations are needed as data stores for the organization (as opposed to federated servers), the organization administrator can add them. For example, if publishers in another department want a folder data store in /net/infrastructure added to the organization, confirm that all nodes in the deployment can access that location and add the folder data store item in the portal.
Caution:
Adding folder data stores to the organization (the server labeled (Hosting Server)) after the organization is configured causes critical system and utility services to restart. No one can use ArcGIS Enterprise while these restart. Therefore, add these folder data stores when people are least likely to access the portal, such as after regular office hours or hours designated for system maintenance.
It may take several minutes for all the services to restart. You can check the status of affected services by signing in to ArcGIS Enterprise Manager and checking the status of System Services Pods and Utility Services Pods on the Overview tab.