Min and Max instances for Publishing Tools geoprocessing service

[berniejconnors]

In the System folder in ArcGIS Server Manager there are the Publishing Tools - a geoprocessing service that is required to publish map services.  Here are the deails of our Publishing Tools running on our 3 server site:

PublishingTools (Geoprocessing Service)

The PublishingTools service is used by ArcGIS Server to publish service definition files as services.

Instance Type:	Dedicated
Status:	Started
Instances Running:	3
Instances in Use:	0
Maximum Instances:	6

The service parameters are set to minimum instances = 1 and maximum instances = 2.  Therefore, across all three servers we get "Instances Running: 3" and "Maximum Instances: 6".  That seems excessive to me.  Publishing map services is a very occassional task and there is always only one person publishing services.

Could the instances be set to min=0 and max=1 to reduce server load? or would min=1 and max=1 be better?  Othern than having to wait for the Publishing Tools geoprocessing service to spin up are there other drawbacks to setting min instances=0?

Thanks,

Bernie.

[ReeseFacendini · Accepted solution]

Because you have 3 ArcGIS Server nodes joined to a site, each node gets set at min =1 max =2 in case one of them were to go down.  That's where the 3 & 6 come from, respectively and it's not that a single machine (node) has 3 instances up and running.  A joined site shares the resources across all included machines.  Setting the min instances to 0 can cause a slight delay while the site spins up an instance to be used, but I wouldn't reduce the max instances to anything less than 3 (one instance per node in the site).

[berniejconnors]

Reese, thanks for your reply.  Since the Publishing Tools geoprocessing service is only used by the GIS staff I don't mind causing a slight delay in the service publishing process.  I would be more hesitant to make changes that would affect our end users - the Public.  We are running a lot of services on these machines so saving a bit of computing resources here and there will make a difference.

[JoshuaBixby]

I have no problem changing defaults when there is a compelling reason, but I don't think that is the case here.  Having a single ArcSOC running all the time on each machine for publishing has little to no impact on ArcGIS Server on a machine, so I would leave well enough alone.