Best way to publish a locally created tile cache to a server with limited disk space?

Question

I've created a tile cache of some aerial photography on my desktop and want to publish it to Enterprise as  a service referencing only the cache, no underlying source data. Let's say the cache is 100 GB and there's 150 GB free on the server. Every method I've looked at appears to explicitly or implicitly upload the cache to the server and then copy/unpack it to the cache directory, meaning there would have to be more than twice the size of the cache free on server, which I don't have.

Can I somehow use OS tools to copy the cache directly into the server cache directory and then publish it from there?

Enterprise 10.9.1, Arc Pro 3.4, cache created with ArcCatalog 10.8.

Mark_Johnson · Answer

Thanks for the reply, I think what you're saying is to publish the service but only cache a small part, then copy the full cache over manually? I'm probably wrong about this, but when I publish imagery I don't want to add it to a map first and potentially have any Arc Pro display settings mess with what gets published, I just want "raw" pixels. I don't know a way to do your method without starting first with the dataset in a map.

I was able to clear some disk space and use Share Package to upload and publish the service, then delete the upload, but I'll keep your method in mind for next time.

DavidSolari · Answer

The cache format between the tools you run locally and the server are usually identical, at least if your Pro and Enterprise versions are close enough. Try building a cache for a small area on the server, then build the full cache locally. You can open most cache package formats with 7-zip and compare the file structure to what's in your server directories, if this is a new service with nothing to lose then swap the files and see if everything works as intended. This probably isn't a supported workflow so I can't guarantee anything but I do this with vector tile packages when the server rebuilds randomly fail and it works like a charm (Pro 3.1, Enterprise 11.1).