Organization of Services

[AlanToms]

Hello folks,

Does anyone have a good system for the way they organize services?  I figured I would not put services at the root just to help keep things organized.  I made a folder each for basemaps, cached data, and dynamic data.  After make a few services and setting up a few apps, this organzation is starting to seem clunky.  Should I just put them all in root?  Anyone have alternatives to share?

Thank you
Alan

[KevinGooss]

Don't put them in the root!
If you ever have to connect to that ags instance using ArcCatalog you then have to wait for all of those root services to load before you can interact with the instance. This may seem trivial but if you ever have to do it over vpn or rdc it can be painful.
Besides, you wouldn't muck up the root c drive of your machine would you?

As to the organization there are many strategies - you have to find what is right for you.
Some folks create map documents for a specific application and then create a service off that which supplies resources for that application.
if you have many applications that becomes cumbersome very quickly and you will have repetition or cross-calls for shared resources.
Some folks align their mxds/services based upon the data within them - like transportation, etc.
Others align them based on functionality - basemaps, imagery, etc.

And the hybrid also seems healthy.
I don't know your data so i can't really say what you should do but i think you are off to a good start.
when you say clunky what do you mean?
are you finding you have many more dynamic layers? then you can create more folders under that folder or organize the dynamic layers into separate mxds/services.

I think the overarching goal should be for the apps and devs to have easy access to an organized set of data. And there should be little to no duplication of data layers. You might duplicate map layers for different symbology or definition queries - but at 10.1 that kind of thing can be done in the service call.

hope this helps.