The data store...do I need it?

[JeffGodfrey]

I am rolling out the ArcGIS Enterprise products for testing.  I am wondering what is the purpose of the datastore, if I already have an relational SQL enterprise database?  The documentation makes it seem like just another database to store our data.   Do I need the datastore at all?  What benefits does it have over my current SDE database?  

Thank you

Jeff

[JonathanQuinn]

There are a number of benefits of setting up the ArcGIS Data Store, which will give you the base ArcGIS Enterprise deployment and additional functionality throughout the deployment. It's not a replacement of your SDE database. The following white paper goes into more detail about this:

https://community.esri.com/community/gis/enterprise-gis/arcgis-enterprise/blog/2018/06/13/esri-white...