"Maintenance Mode" for doing enterprise database maintenance

[LeighParker2]

Currently, doing enterprise database maintenance is cumbersome. Even if it's just simply adding a field to an existing feature class, it could take an hour because of everything you have to do to make maintenance possible. In ArcGIS Pro you have to stop connections and then clear connections, but you also have to remove privileges (except administrator) to make sure no one connects (we have many services that reconnect automatically every few seconds) when you subsequently have to allow connections because in ArcGIS Pro you have to be able to make more than one administrator connection (and that won't work if the connections are stopped).

Ideally, there would be a "Maintenance Mode" that an administrator could go into to perform maintenance that would automatically do these things on the fly. And perhaps, exiting maintenance mode would put everything back the way it was.

This would be helpful since we are already having to do maintenance after hours so we don't take down our GIS during business hours.

I'll probably end up creating this in python when I have time but we can't be the only shop with this issue.

[BillFox]

does this get you there?

Prevent geodatabase connections 

[LeighParker2]

Thanks. Unfortunately, that is only one piece (the stopping connections I mentioned in my post).

[DavidSolari]

This is a common issue for my org when we have to tweak long-running services. We have to assess which services touch the required datasets, stop them, make the updates and start them back up, only to then interrupt the services again for republishing jobs; it's a bit much at times. Disabling the schema lock on the services causes more problems than it solves as it's trivial to create fatal differences between the new schema and the old service definition.

Leigh's idea of a one-click option to enable DDL operations would save a ton of headaches as we could flip the switch, make our changes and then republish the services (if needed) with minimal interruptions before flipping it back. Making this an official ArcGIS thing that the server can inspect and make adjustments for is far more elegant than relying on service stoppages or arbitrary lock breaking.

[Alex_755]

My organization is in the same position. As we revisit existing projects and plan for new projects, we will need to implement schema changes to meet our data requirements. 

We are also doing database maintenance after-hours to minimize the impact to internal work groups. I run a Model Builder tool to assist with the process.

As a follow up to geodatabase connections, has anyone experience any issues with the Geodatabase is accepting connections check/uncheck box? This would occasionally allow connections in ArcMap and early versions of ArcGIS Pro. To be on the safe side, I have resorted to temporarily stopping the ArcGIS Server service to prevent services from connecting to referenced data sources. This may be overkill for later releases of ArcGIS Pro, but has been running smoothly so far. 

@LeighParker2 Glad you brought up this topic. "Maintenance Mode" would be helpful for many organizations.