How much does merging services affect server performance?

Question

Hello!0

Currently we have an ArcGIS Server 10.4 up and running with more than 150 separate services which affects the server performance really bad. RAM usage is almost always very high as well as the number of ArcSOC processes and swap file is large. Since there are a lot of services related to a common topic (f.i. climate, geology etc) I was thinking of merging some of them to improve performance but really have little idea how effective it will be. Will there be a somewhat significant improvements in RAM usage and overall server performance if I there are, for example, 50 services instead of 100 but with twice more layers? Thank you

Yan

MarkChilcott · Answer

We moved from 10.3.1 to 10.6.1.  10.7.1 was not released at the time we started the migration.  During our tuning we wanted to reduce load on servers, and set min instances to 0.  Had the cold start up issue though.  Is a balancing act.  Hoping that 10.7.1 shared instances will get around this problem, but have not tested.

Here is another hint - don't leave it too long between upgrades.  Do it often.  A four year gap is a killer.

MikeVolz · Answer

Have you found AGS 10.7 shared instances helpful to drop memory consumption on your server?

MarkChilcott · Answer

We have just had a difficult year in relation to server crashes and performance tuning.  Following are the best references I could give you are:

* ArcGIS Enterprise: Performance and scalability best practices
* Server Software Performance
* PerfQAnalyzer for ArcMap
* System Log Parser for ArcGIS
* Shared instances in 10.7

Some hints from our experience:

* Use the System Log Parser to work out which of your services are consuming the most resources.  Focus on the top 20.
* Tune the number of instances first.  Pay a lot of attention to this
* Tune the individual mxd files to ensure these are working to the best ability.  
* Use ArcGIS monitor or something like Grafana to monitor the hardware
* Get the the latest release of software as soon as you can
* Be very careful of the ArcGIS Server Unintended Service Restart bug - make sure you install the patch for this

You may find shared instances in 10.7 has some advantages.

Cheers,

Mark