How is a published "hosted feature layer" stored in Portal

BoGuo

We understand that when publishing a hosted feature layer by following this instruction, Publish hosted feature layers—Portal for ArcGIS | Documentation for ArcGIS Enterprise ,  the data goes into "ArcGIS Data Store." 

But in the case of uploading an FDGB, is the data ended up in an RDBMS behind the scene or the data is actually stored in a folder accessible to the portal services? 

If the answer is the former, as we'd suspect, does that mean the ArcGIS Data Store includes its an RDBMS engine such as Postgresql?  We did not install any RDBMS as part of the enterprise installation, nor could we find any RDBMS services on the host machine.  So we are baffled...

Thanks!

Bo 

JacobBoyleesri

You are correct, a Base ArcGIS Enterprise installation includes Portal, Hosted ArcGIS Server, Relational Data Store, and optionally Web Adaptor.

Relational Data Store does in-fact leverage PostgreSQL server under the hood, so to speak, but it runs under the Data Store Windows Service and you'll also see some PostgreSQL tasks running on the host machine in Task Manager.  The software manages the PostgreSQL and does not require any intervention in most cases.  In the case of your file geodatabase, the data is loaded to the Relational Data Store and served out by the hosting ArcGIS Server.  The file geodatabase itself is also stored in the Portal Content Store as it is considered a separate item.

Each of the 3 Data Store types utilizes a different engine, each was chosen based on the kind of data.