Caching tips, tricks, secrets, best practices?

RoyceSimpson · ‎10-09-2012

I've been attempting to cache a bunch of map services on 10.1 for a few weeks now. Some complete in one shot, others take several attempts and even then, I'm not sure if they are complete or not. The Caching status dialogue has yet to show results that give any confidence. The "job Status" tab on the Cache Status details dialogue has jobs that are "processing" even though the servers aren't doing anything and I can't seem to cancel them. I've attempted to run the "manage map server cache status" tool with no success (even though the tool reports "success" after completing). After running that tool, I get "0.0% of the tiles are present" even though I can view the service in the JavaScript viewer and see that there tiles present. I can even open the status.gdb fgdb and get all kinds of info. Is it reliable?

I'm very excited about where AGS 10.1 is going but wow, caching in 10.1 is like herding very temperamental cats. You can view/manage caching related activities from the service itself (by right clicking the service in catalog), going to the "server" tools in catalog or interacting (to a certain extent) with the service in the web based manager. There are tools for caching and reporting on caching and there are are services that do the same. You can run the jobs synchronously (same as "wait for job completion"?) or asynchronously (why not just always async?) report status via map service, or not (I haven't figured that one out yet). Each avenue has different UIs, capabilities, inputs, outputs, etc.

Any insight into this tricky caching business would be helpful. I've read through most (I think) of the online documentation but even then, there are enough "notes", "tips", "caution" and "legacy" statements that honestly it's hard to keep track of what the best path is.

Also, it would be great to see what bugs have been reported/accepted but I can't seem to find any esri pages for that. Esri, didn't you open that up a year or so ago?

JustinHunter · ‎10-29-2012

>>Justin, it seems you are running into a bug, can you share your data, server logs & error reports on server with ESRI support, so that we can reproduce & resolve this problem.

I have a ticket open with esri.ca but they've really been unable to help. Unfortunately, they've given me so many suggestions that all that is now gone. My data is still there, but I've re-done my map and the server was wiped out and reinstalled.

I began trying this on exploded mode- we'll see how it goes.

nicogis · ‎10-30-2012

if it can be help, esri posts on New features for planning and monitoring map caches in ArcGIS 10.1

JustinHunter · ‎10-31-2012

I have a ticket open with esri.ca but they've really been unable to help. Unfortunately, they've given me so many suggestions that all that is now gone. My data is still there, but I've re-done my map and the server was wiped out and reinstalled.

I began trying this on exploded mode- we'll see how it goes.

In addition to this- I just got off the phone with Esri support- they suggested I build the cache each province/territory at a time and make a zipped backup each time in case it fails. So far so good. It also gives AGS and my computer, which I still do my day-to-day work on as caching is happening in the background, some time to breathe. I'm also skipping a majority of water tiles since before I was doing AOI Envelope of Canada, which includes tons of water to the north/northeast, now it'll just be empty tiles which will be ignored and my maps background will be water blue.

Also, I don't know if this makes any difference, but I turned on the 'Allow clients to cache tiles locally' and it seems to be using much less resources than before. Again, could be in my mind.

JackZHANG · ‎11-01-2012

The Manage Map Server Cache Status tool also has problem to deal with user specified cache boundary. I have a map service want to re-build the cache status. The mxd's extent is whole Australia, but in the map service property settings - Area of interest to cache I specified a much smaller area as the cache boundary. When running the tool, the Area of Interest Polygon, which is a feature class called ManagedMapServerCacheStatus::area_of_interest in a scratch geodatabse for the tool got nothing in it. I even went into the scratch database and manually appended my cache boundary to the feature class, but the tool still tries to rebuild the cache status for the whole extend of the mxd, rather than the specified cache boundary in the map service properties or in the tool...

GarimaTiwari · ‎11-14-2012

Jack,

The ManageMapServerCacheStatus tool is designed to work using "Full extents" of the map service when running with "REBUILD_CACHE_STATUS" mode. In the upcoming release we plan to provide a new mode which can work with user specified feature.

--Garima

DerekLaw · ‎11-20-2012

Hi Royce et al.,

Any insight into this caching business would be helpful.

FYI please see this blog post, Accelerating map cache creation

Hope this helps,

LuyangRen · ‎08-27-2013

>> It seems that the caching instances are crashing/failing before updating the cache status. Can you check if there are any Error Reports generated on your server by going to �??ArcGIS Server Manager > Logs> Error Reports�?�? if there are some error reports can you share them with us.

Hi Garima,

I have the same problem of "0.0% of the Tiles are present". I think the Caching Tools is crashed because any service with cache cannot be display now. But any service without cache works fine.

So I checked the cache status in ArcCatalog and it says "0.0% of the Tiles are present" and the status is "Tile generation is not in progress". Attached is the screenshot of the cache status in ArcCatalog. And the job status is empty.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]27021[/ATTACH]

I check the logs in ArcGIS Server Manager and I got this record:
The containing process for 'System/CachingTools' job 'j44d79cdb591e47bab6bf33444d2d101e' has crashed.

The story is my colleague created a map service with a huge size cache, which is before the time of the above record. So I believe the Caching Tools is crashed. So any service with cache created after that cannot display.

Could you help me fix the problem?

Thank you
Luyang