What’s new in ArcGIS Enterprise 11.4 on Kubernetes

Esri has released ArcGIS Enterprise 11.4 on Kubernetes! It follows the recent release of ArcGIS Enterprise 11.4 on Windows and Linux. ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes is available to Esri customers through an annual subscription license. It runs in your environment and follows cloud-native software patterns to deliver high availability and scalability.

At the same time, it reduces effort by helping you deploy and upgrade the system quickly and with fewer steps. ArcGIS Enterprise 11.4 on Kubernetes includes eagerly awaited improvements. Read on for some highlights.

What is ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes?

ArcGIS Enterprise can be deployed on Windows, Linux and Kubernetes. ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes is foundational to a Geographic Information System (GIS) that can deliver high availability for mission-critical deployments. It remains performant despite volatile demand for services or failures in the underlying infrastructure. Administrators can monitor the system and keep the software updated with minimal effort. The system can scale at a moment’s notice and correct many failures autonomously, helping you deliver location intelligence to your organization with confidence.

Read more about how the US Forest Service is using ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes as part of its Interdepartmental Imagery Publication Platform (IIPP), modernizing access to over a petabyte of aerial imagery and raster datasets.

While a Kubernetes architecture is different from Windows or Linux, users have a familiar experience publishing and consuming services as they deliver maps and apps, analyze data, and collaborate with colleagues.

If you are wondering if the software can address challenges your team is facing, read ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes: Is it for me? and talk with your Esri representative. A great way to get familiar with the software is through our Esri Academy class Deploying ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes. You will receive two days of instructor-led training, working in a Kubernetes environment provided by Esri.

The Esri Academy offers the instructor-led course Deploying ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes, which allows you to deploy, tune, and work with the software in a lab environment provided for you. Students rate the course highly for its quality and value.

Highlights of what’s new

ArcGIS Enterprise 11.4 on Windows, Linux, and Kubernetes includes many improvements and new functionality. These are covered in the article What’s New in ArcGIS Enterprise 11.4. Below we will share a few things unique to the Kubernetes deployment option. They are explained further in the documentation: What’s new in this release and Release notes. You can also choose a system pattern on the ArcGIS Architecture Center, where we illustrate a deployment pattern for different system types running on Kubernetes.

ArcGIS Notebook Services

Notebook Server helps you bring data science into your organization, whether it’s to analyze features or raster data, or to run custom workflows and extend ArcGIS with additional Python libraries. With 11.4, this capability is built into ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes as ArcGIS Notebook Services. It gives you tremendous scaling and control over your notebook workflows, as it runs on the microservices architecture of your Kubernetes environment.

The best news? It’s free! ArcGIS Notebook Services  is included in your ArcGIS Enterprise 11.4 on Kubernetes license and is available to your team immediately after you enable it. Read more here about this capability and others, such as ArcGIS Image Services and ArcGIS Raster Analytics, which can all be licensed to run in your Kubernetes environment.

ArcGIS Excalibur

ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes now supports ArcGIS Excalibur, a web-based application that modernizes and enhances image-workflows through intuitive experiences. We continue to improve ArcGIS Excalibur’s functionality to help you organize and reference geo-enabled images and video.

Persistent Volume as folder-based data stores

A long-awaited improvement to data storage on Kubernetes, we now expose data folders as persistent volumes (PVs). This allows you to register them as folder data stores. This gives you flexibility to choose the network file system version and mount options, or to register a share using SMB protocol, the default file-sharing protocol for Windows operating systems.

From a performance perspective, moving data to be closer to service pods will typically improve performance. For example, geocoding services benefit from local volumes. Now you can configure this through ArcGIS Enterprise Manager.

Migrate items or a service definition

We’ve included many improvements to help you manage your data and export or migrate services. Read more here. A few highlights include:

The export service operation exports a service definition for a map service (both by-reference and by-value) or a hosted feature service. The resulting service definition can then be published to a new ArcGIS Enterprise organization. When publishing the service definition to the new organization, there is an option to preserve the service’s item ID values.

Migrate and back up group content by exporting items to an export package (.epk) and using the package to import the items into groups in the same or different organizations.

Manage pod placement on nodes

A node is a computing unit of like virtual or physical machines in a traditional environment, that lets you scale and tune your microservices. You might want to assign specific workflows such as routing problems, deep learning, or image processing on different node pools, to optimize performance or cost. Or you may want to ease the assignment of workflows to different geographically located node pools, to achieve geographic redundancy and increase system resilience. On Kubernetes, this is done through setting pod affinities and tolerations.

Read more here about managing pod placement and scenarios illustrating how this works. ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes provided pod placement capabilities with the 11.3 release through our API. With the 11.4 release, we provide a more intuitive experience through the interface of ArcGIS Enterprise Manager to perform these actions using custom labels that you have established within your Kubernetes environment.

Issues addressed

As always, each release also includes fixes and administrative improvements. See the release notes.

ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes product lifecycle

ArcGIS Enterprise 11.3 on Kubernetes is entering mature support. That means it is still eligible for technical and online support but is not eligible for software updates or patches. ArcGIS Enterprise 11.2 and earlier versions on Kubernetes are being retired, and no longer eligible for support. See the Esri Product Lifecycle Support Policy for more information.

The rapid evolution of cloud-native software helps us bring you greater performance and reliability to your managed GIS systems. This results in a shorter lifecycle on Kubernetes, compared to running on Windows or Linux.

Upgrading to 11.4

Upgrading to 11.4 is available to customers with an active subscription for ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes. You decide when to upgrade, but we recommend moving to the latest version as soon as possible to gain the latest improvements and capabilities. Review the product lifecycle for details.

Esri supports ArcGIS Enterprise 11.4 running on Kubernetes v1.29 and v1.30. Esri does not support ArcGIS Enterprise 11.4 running on earlier or later versions of Kubernetes than this. See the System Requirements for details.

If you are using ArcGIS Enterprise 11.3 on Kubernetes, and you want to delay upgrading to 11.4, we have released a patch for 11.3 that will add support for Kubernetes v1.30.

Steps to upgrade to 11.4

If you are running ArcGIS Enterprise 11.3 on Kubernetes, here’s how to upgrade to 11.4. The upgrade experience is simple and mostly automated, thanks to the nature of containerized software. However, some preparatory work is still required. Read Upgrade and update requirements and then:

1. From My Esri, download the license file for the 11.4 release on Kubernetes.
2. Take a backup of your deployment.
3. From ArcGIS Enterprise Manager, apply the 11.4 upgrade. You will be prompted for the 11.4 license file.
4. If needed, upgrade your Kubernetes environment to version supported by 11.4.

If you have any questions or issues, contact Esri Technical Support.

Summary of supported functionality

Below is a summary of commonly used functionality that is supported with ArcGIS Enterprise 11.4 on Kubernetes, including some more highlights of what is new and improved. For more details and a more complete list of what now supported, review the product documentation and the latest release’s product highlights.

Supported Kubernetes environments

ArcGIS Enterprise 11.4 supports Kubernetes v1.29 and v1.30.  Remember to check system requirements and to upgrade ArcGIS Enterprise first, before upgrading your Kubernetes cluster.

• Amazon AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
• Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
• Google Cloud Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
• Rancher (RKE & RKE2)
• Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (RHOS)
• Red Hat OpenShift running as a managed service within AWS (ROSA) or Azure (ARO)

If you manage distributed applications on Kubernetes and you use ArcGIS Enterprise, but you don’t see your environment listed above, notify your Esri representative.

Deployment and upgrading

• Deploy an ArcGIS Enterprise organization in interactive or silent modes
• Configure an ArcGIS Enterprise organization using a setup wizard or script
• Use the ArcGIS Enterprise Manager application, unique to the Kubernetes deployment, to monitor, tune, manage, and upgrade or update the organization
• Run on environments in the cloud or fully disconnected
• Deploy ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes from your organization’s container registry
• Choose from several architecture profiles to optimize resources for high availability
• Support multiple deployments within the same Kubernetes cluster

Administration

• New: Assign a classification schema to your organization to allow members to classify their items.
• New: Schedule health check reports to run at a fixed time in the future, either once or on a recurring basis
• Improved (interface): Use ArcGIS Enterprise Manager to manage pod placement on nodes for GIS services by applying node affinity and tolerations
• Create health check reports to help you manage the system
• Integrate with application load balancers and configure layer 7 routing services during deployment
• Add custom annotations to in-cluster ingress controller service to customize layer 4 load balancers on cloud platforms
• Monitor and search logs
• Monitor system and utility service pod status
• Scale service and system deployments using ArcGIS Enterprise Manager or Administrator API
• Create and administer organization webhooks, and subscribe to service webhooks for geoprocessing and feature services
• Obtain service usage statistics for integration into your metrics visualization tool, e.g. Grafana
• Backup and restore the ArcGIS Enterprise organization using ArcGIS Enterprise Manager or Administrator API
• Recover access to the organization when administrative credentials are no longer available

Security

• Configure SAML and OpenID Connect
• Configure LDAP and Windows Active Directory
• Configure enterprise groups and users
• Configure web-tier authentication including IWA and PKI with ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes Web Adaptor
• Enable 256-bit AES for passwords

Data management

• New: The export service operation exports a service definition for a map service or a hosted feature service
• New: Migrate and back up group content by exporting items to an export package (.epk) and using the package to import the items
• New: Add persistent volumes as a user managed resource for publishing workflows, allowing you to register Windows shares directly
• New: Update raster store properties from ArcGIS Enterprise Manager
• New: Add a cloud database service for the organization’s relational store when configuring a new organization
• New: From the item page of imagery layers, you can start and stop the service and enable SOEs and SOIs.
• Check available storage, memory, and health of system-managed data stores
• Increase volume size of object stores, relational stores, and spatiotemporal & index stores
• Configure cloud-native services for system managed object stores such as Amazon S3, Azure Blob, or Google Cloud Store
• Support for Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery, and Snowflake cloud data warehouses
• Register SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and SAP HANA as databases
• Register your own data sources including folders and enterprise geodatabases
• Add network file shares as folder data stores
• Support for bulk publishing with an enterprise geodatabase
• Support for distributed collaboration including two-way editing

Creating and sharing content (additional licensing may be required)

• New: Notebook Services to analyze features and raster data, or to run custom workflow; this is included with your active subscription
• Perform distributed raster analytics processing for deep learning
• Create and manage floor plan data, maps and services with ArcGIS Indoors
• Extend services with SOIs and SOEs developed with Java, for map services
• Publish map, feature, and geocode services
• Publish map, tile, and scene tile packages
• Publish hosted feature layers
• Conduct spatial analysis
• Publish and consume services from ArcGIS Pro (Note: importing & exporting map server cache workflows from Pro is not supported)
• Configure and share routing services
• Publish location services and share location
• Use web tools to share analysis across the organization
• Publish image data sets as an imagery layer, running as a containerized service
• Support for ArcGIS Utility Network user type extension (through federation)
• Support for ArcGIS Parcel Fabric user type extension (through federation)
• Support for ArcGIS Trace Network user type extension

ArcGIS Utility Network and ArcGIS Parcel Fabric are available through an ArcGIS GIS Server hosted on Windows or Linux.

Not supported at 11.4:

• ArcGIS Knowledge user type extension
• Publish scene services with associated feature layers
• Import and export map server cache workflows from ArcGIS Pro

Server federation

• Federate a standalone ArcGIS GIS Server
• Federate a standalone ArcGIS Image Server
• Federate an ArcGIS Workflow Manager Server

Server federation is not  supported at 11.4 for:

• Federate an ArcGIS GeoEvent Server
• Federate an ArcGIS Knowledge Server
• Federate an ArcGIS Mission Server
• Federate an ArcGIS Video Server

Applications and extensions

• New: ArcGIS Excalibur
• ArcGIS AppStudio
• ArcGIS Companion
• ArcGIS CityEngine
• ArcGIS Dashboards
• ArcGIS Drone2Map
• ArcGIS Earth
• ArcGIS Experience Builder
• ArcGIS Explorer
• ArcGIS Field Maps
• ArcGIS Indoors and Space Planner
• ArcGIS Instant Apps
• ArcGIS for Office and ArcGIS for SharePoint
• ArcGIS Maps for Power BI
• ArcGIS Navigator
• ArcGIS Pro
• ArcGIS QuickCapture
• ArcGIS Survey123
• ArcGIS Workforce
• Map Viewer
• Scene Viewer

Not supported at 11.4:

• ArcGIS Business Analyst Enterprise
• ArcGIS Data Interoperability Extension
• ArcGIS Insights
• ArcGIS Mission
• ArcGIS Video Server

Where to go next?

Here are several resources to help you take the next step and learn more about ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes.

Visit our product page to find video demonstrations and articles sharing more information about ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes. Watch recorded workshops on our media channel which go into more depth on why cloud-native software has become so significant to geospatial solutions.

Review the System Documentation including the System Architecture page, to learn more about how we’ve built the cloud-native software to deliver high availability and scaling.

Sign up for the popular instructor-led class Deploying ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes, where you will gain experience with installing, configuring, and managing ArcGIS Enterprise on a Kubernetes environment.

Talk with your Esri representative about the possibility of a software evaluation, if you have experience with ArcGIS Enterprise and with managing distributed applications on Kubernetes.

Thank you for reading!

Customers tell us that ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes eases and accelerates deployments, upgrades, system tuning and monitoring, and service scaling. It can do all this with built-in High Availability. Successful deployments requires an environment supported by Esri and administrative experience managing distributed applications on Kubernetes. If your modern cloud strategy is calling for a cloud-native architecture to power your location intelligence, and if you’d like to learn more, we’d be pleased to talk with you.