The system and solution architecture process of designing with ArcGIS can take many forms. While some projects may have a significant up-front architecture phase, where requirements are carefully defined and reviewed and a specific system design can be generated, other systems or projects may take a more agile approach and need an agile architecture design to match.
While there is no defined proper method, single framework, or best approach to designing an architecture with ArcGIS, this section of the ArcGIS Well-Architected Framework will share best practices, provide guidance on key technology topics and deployment considerations, and generally support a more advanced and effective architecture process for a given system or project.
The practice of architecture as it relates to ArcGIS systems has developed in the Esri community over the past three decades. While concepts like processing power, storage performance or WAN bandwidth remain important to design, new areas of requirements such as security, enterprise integrations, data sovereignty or other topics have added to the importance of a structured architectural approach that considers a wide array of inputs. The practice of designing ArcGIS systems will continually evolve, as new technology drives new requirements, and one of the main challenges (and inspirations) for architects is to stay at the edge of these new trends and tools.
This section of the Well-Architected Framework contains three main sub-sections:
Architectural foundations includes recommendations for how to successfully engage in the architecture design process, along with key deployment concepts, decisions and topics that apply to any ArcGIS system. Design principles include key decisions related to architecture components, extending with ArcGIS SDKs and the concept of environment isolation. The deployment concepts sub-section includes topics on a variety of IT topics as they relate to ArcGIS architectures.