Two equivalent basemap services on two different servers -- one shared tile cache?

[DanBowerman]

I hope someone can lend some insight towards this situation. I have two basemap services across two different 10.1 servers.. they are identical, except one has a tile cache on a common shared drive, and the other service does not yet have a cache assigned.

Is it possible to attach the existing cache from the shared drive to the unlinked service -- thereby permitting one tile cache shared across two services on different servers? If so, how would one go about doing this? The Import Map Server Cache function doesn't seem to handle this scenario.

[JayantaPoddar]

If you want the same shared folder of cache to work for both the servers, then both the servers should be a part of a single ArcGIS Server site (cluster).

If you have separate server sites, you copy the cache of the basemap (from Windows Explorer) from cache folder of one server to cache folder of the second server?

[DanBowerman]

Thanks for the prompt response!

At issue here, I think, is that the shared file system is between an internal Staging server and an external Production server. The two servers cannot be clustered, unfortunately.. and as this is a rather huge tile cache of all of Canada, we are trying to save on storage costs. So the sites are indeed separate, but the file system is shared.

[JakeSkinner · Accepted solution]

Hi Dan,

You can create a new cache directory pointing to the shared directory for each ArcGIS Server instance.  As long as the services are the same name, and they are pointing to the shared directory (see below), I believe both services can use the cache.

[JayantaPoddar]

Hi Jake,

Just a query. Can two different server sites have a common cache directory?

[RandyKreuziger]

Jayanta,

We are running two production ArcGIS Servers that point to the same UNC path on a SAN for caches and it works fine. 

[DanBowerman]

It looks like it can -- the caveat being you must have an equivalent ArcGIS service account (same credentials) on each site, and both servers need the shared folder to have permissions to this account, as well it needs to be configured as a Cache directory in ArcGIS Server Manager on both sites.