Latest Contributions by SpencerLarson

Henry- Thanks for your reply.  Since I work in the government sector, open source (i.e PostgresSQL) is not an option.  SQL Server seems to be the standard with the IT here so I think I am going that route.  It sounds based upon your email that you are recommending a 4 core SQL Deployment so I would need  to purchase two licenses of SQL (does this sound correct?).  As you seemed well versed in SQL, what would be the case where you would need a Enterprise version of SQL to run a Enterprise GIS as compared to Standard. ... View more

Ben-  Below are some responses.  I am learning as I go so I appreciate any additional feedback you can provide.  My current thought is to have a 2 server configuration with a SAN for increased storage each with 32 GB Ram and each having 4 cores.  I am trying to plan for now and the future but these servers/SAN would be also hosting a repository of asbuilts and drawings associated with installation facilities as well having backups.  With all that being said does ESRI have folks that can work to make recommendations. I am under a ELA but not sure if there is this type of support as part of the agreeement. Thanks  Spencer Some considerations and questions I ask before I do a deployment are: What capabilities do you need?  Initially a multiuser editing environment (enterprise gdb), then eventually portal, web maps, apps. How much downtime can users experience? (This leads to the next three questions)  Not sure what this questions is referring to.  The ideal would be to have users editing and viewing to not have performance issues and lag. Does the environment need to be highly available? (Active- Active This doubles the amount of machines and licenses usually)  Again not sure what this means, the environment would be accessible via a LAN, I don't quite understand  how web editing work so I am not sure if this is what you are referring to being highly available Do you want a backup system in place? (Active-Passive This doubles the amount of machines but since only one Enterprise is running at a time you can reuse the licenses)  Yes, backup is desired and planned. What sort of data will be stored in the Enterprise system? (This helps you to understand the amounts of data you are likely going to need to store and backup)  Vector/Raster Data, maps, eventually webmaps and other items associated with Portal How many people will be administering the system?(How simple does the system need to be so that the admins don't get overwhelmed by the amount of work. Leads into the next question as well.)  I envision maybe 1-2  people part time administering the system.  I guess another question is this a full time job, isn't most of the work just managing permissions Do you want everything on one machine or each capability to have its own machine? (This depends on the capabilities you want as some need to have their own server for basic performance. Single site vs multi site build)  I think we planning to using two servers to balance the load as that seems recommended. What load are you expecting? (Internal users only?, External users?)  Here at my location we have about 80 GIS users at varying levels.  I would expect about half to actually edit data and half to just be users.  As for external users accessing web maps, thats really hard to gage at this point as I work on a military base but I would think no more than 100 individuals would be accessing the portal at one time even thought the total installation population is over 30,000 (soldiers, government staff, and contractors)   Most of my builds use the following principles: 4 Cores, 8GB RAM is a minimum for all capabilities (Note: Minimum means it will start, users will not have a very good experience using the minimum!!)  According to what I read I thought you had to have 16 GB Ram at a miniumum   Using the above advice if I was building a test deployment of Enterprise (ArcGIS Portal, Server (Hosting), and Datastore (relational)) on a single machine I would be looking at 4 core and 24GB of RAM. For a multiple machine deployment for the same ( 3 machines with Portal, Server and Datastore on their own machine) I would look at each machine being 4 core 8GB of RAM.   Again the above machines would not deal very well with more than 5 or so users and a handful or services. I would start off with 4 core and 12GB for each service in a multi machine deployment.   I'm sure I've missed obvious things above so I'm more than happy to discuss!   Thanks,   Ben ... View more

Derek- Thanks for providing the links.   I will take a look and if I have further/questions comments as it relates I will post on this thread. Spencer ... View more

Randy- Appreciate your help with this. Correct me if I am wrong but the way the code was written would be appropriate if one was running the code from say idle or the command line, right?  If I plugged this into the field calculator I wouldn't need the first line of code layer = 'layerName' # your layer or shapefile as well as line 4 field2= "waterUtilityNodeIDPK" # field to update , right? ... View more

I have some python code that does sequential numbering which works and I would think I need some type of if then statement to only add a sequential number at the end if more than one value .  I am a novice to python and have taken some course work but programming doesn't come natural to me.  I really struggle.  Willing to to learn just need help and hints. ... View more

The data is on a server or a networked location, but I never had any issue with data being stored on a network and not being able to export. The map does have some raster graphics as well that I forget to mention. ... View more

Lance- If you provide a FTP site where I can post the files or I can send you a link to a location where you can download to take a better look with what I am dealing with on my end.  Additionally do you think running a data recovery software  would be of any use to track down geodatabase, if the last known occurence there was a potential for some of the files to be locked while I did that copy and paste which caused my current issue to occur (unusable geodatabase files)? Spencer ... View more

Lance- So I guess I am out of luck.  Any other solutions other then using the last backed up copy I have available?  If I contact ESRI technical support will they possibly be able to do anything additional that you haven't already suggested. -Spencer ... View more

When I refered to the signature file I am referring to the (gdb) that every file geodatabase needs for the ArcGIS to read the file as a geodatabase.  When I copied and pasted another (gdb) from a another existing geodatabase.  ArcCatalog shows the geodatabase symbol, (gray cylinder) but when trying to open it further I get the message "This release of the GeoDatabase is either invalid or out of date. [Invailid Geodatabase release]."  I got the same message running the recovery tool, even though as I mentioned the geodatabase was a either a geodatabase created in 10.0 or it was upgraded from a 9.3 release to 10.0 suing the database properties before this happened. ... View more

Lance/Ron- The FGDB was a 10.0 version thats why that error about it being invalid or out of date is perplexing.  I created a new file geodatabse in Arc 10 and then pasted the (gdb) signature file as it was missing this file, but this didn't work either.  I have been trying to figure out what files are missing but when I try to google file geodatabase file components, I don't get anything that tells me the file components.  Am I completly out of luck or is there still a chance the file is recoverable?  -Spencer ... View more