Can a non-contiguous image service be safely cached?

[AlexGerrish1]

I would like to cache a published image service that contains several non-contiguous mosaics from all over the globe. The 'Manage Map Server Cache Tool' estimates this would take > 20TB of disk space but I would hope the caching service would only cache the actual images and not the blank space between them. Can this image service be safely cached without taking up a huge amount of disk space?

The rasters in the mosaic total no more than 20GB.

[PeterBecker · Accepted solution]

These tools include an 'Area of Interest' parameter that can take as input a geometry (eg the boundary of a mosaic dataset) and ensure that only the tiles intersecting these are cached. The tool does not use this to in the size estimation. I would recommend you test with a smaller areas first. Also consider using 10.6 which has a number of enhancements for in the caching tools.

[AlexGerrish1]

Thank you for the quick reply, Peter!

I used a custom layer (derived from the footprints of my source mosaics) as the 'Area of Interest' in the 'Manage Map Server Cache Tiles' tool and it seems to have worked. I ran the tool 12 times, selecting one footprint for each iteration and now the entire non-contiguous service now seems to be cached. Running the tool without a footprint selected caused it to run indefinitely but I will test it once more.