After installing ArcGIS Server, there are a few things you need to do before you can start creating services and allowing client applications to access these services. The steps below provide a summary of the things you need to think about and do to get started. You can find step-by-step instructions about how to perform any of these tasks in the Administration section of the help system.
The ArcGIS Server security model uses the operating system's security model to determine who can connect to and administer the server. You will need to determine which users require administrative access to the server, and then use the operating system tools to add them to the ArcGIS Server Administrators group (agsadmin) on the server object manager (SOM) machine. At a minimum, you will need to add yourself to the agsadmin group.
In the same way, you should identify which users will only need user-level access, and add them to the ArcGIS Server Users group (agsusers) on the SOM machine.
You do not need to add the SOM Account or the SOC Account to either of these groups.
To administer the server, you need to log in to Manager or create an administrative connection in ArcCatalog. You can then configure the server's properties, add additional machines, and add services.
During installation, you should have installed software on one or more machines to function as server object container (SOC) machines. The SOC machines host the services and are the work centers of your GIS server. The first time you connect to your GIS server, you'll need to link these SOC machines to the SOM.
NOTE: If you installed the SOM and SOC on the same machine, this step was done for you by the install; the install process automatically associated the SOC with the SOM.
The services you run on your GIS server are created from the same resources that you work with in ArcGIS Desktop. These are resources such as ArcMap map documents. To publish them on your server, you must make these resources and any data that they reference accessible to the SOC machines and the SOC Account that you created during the GIS Server Post Install. The recommended strategy is to put any required resources on shared network drives or in geodatabases and assign the appropriate persmissions.
In order to make your GIS resources available to others, you need to publish them as services. As part of this process, you'll specify which capabilities of the resource will be available to end users.
Once you add services to your GIS server, you can use them in Web or desktop applications. These can be Web mapping applications that you create with Manager, or they can be desktop applications, such as ArcGIS Explorer, ArcMap, or ArcGlobe. Mobile devices can also make use of properly-configured services.