Real world performance comparison for ArcGIS Server published services with WMS, WCS and WFS capabilities enabled.

[MohammadIshfaq1]

Greetings,

Can you please share your experience regarding how much added resources are needed in enabling wms, wcs, wfs capabilities on a single or set of published map service(s) if we compare them without these capabilities enabled?

I know performance is a complicated subject and can vary with a lot of other factors however, keeping the size of the http(s) traffic, concurrent sessions and size of the back-end data the same, please share your real experience about it. Thanks in advance for your time and help.

[berniejconnors]

Good question.  I am have the very same questions.  I have also sent this question to Esri support.  I'll share any responses I get here.

Bernie.

[berniejconnors]

Here is the question that I sent to Esri support:

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Hello,

               A quick question - If I enable WMS support (or other OGC services) when I am publishing a map service will the service consume more server resources?  Assuming:

• the map service receives 10,000 requests a day before WMS is enabled
• and after WMS is enabled the requests are split 5,000 ArcGIS REST API and 5,000 WMS
• i.e. not an increase in traffic but just a redistribution of requests between the two standards.

Does enabling WMS trigger an additional ArcSOC to spin up?

Or are both OGC and REST requests handled by the same ArcSOC? 

If it is the same ArcSOC will it have a larger memory footprint? 

Will a WMS request require additional CPU cycles when compared to the same request to the REST endpoint?

Thanks,

Bernie.

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[berniejconnors]

Five years later I just rediscovered this topic that I commented on in 2021.  Here is the response from Esri Canada Support (spoiler alert - enabling WMS does not inherently increase the consumption of server resources).

"When WMS is enabled, the service just follows the OGC specifications for a service. It is not different than a map service in terms of consuming resources. It still will consume resources the same way except for the service just following regulations from the OGC. A map service and WMS are the same the WMS is enabled on top of the map service that is published. WMS services are useful if you want to make your maps available online in an open, recognized way across different platforms and clients. ArcSOC will be dependent on the number of max instances of the service. https://enterprise.arcgis.com/en/server/latest/publish-services/windows/wms-services.htm"

Essentially, when you enable WMS on a map service, that allows ArcGIS Server to send some responses formatted as ArcGIS REST and some responses formatted as OGC WMS.  Enabling WMS does not require an additional ArcSOC so server resources (RAM and CPU) should be similar with and without WMS enabled.

When we first started publishing map services with ArcGIS Server in 2009 we feared adding WMS because we assumed it would consume additional server resources.  Back then we were buying servers and CPUs and putting them in racks and it was a big problem if we exceeded the capacity of our servers. 

Bernie.