Image Server Extension

[forestknutsen1]

We are considering adding the image server extension to our environment. We are wondering what the best practice is from a server architecture point of view. 

Can we just add it to our existing servers? Or should we stand up new servers dedicated to imagery?

What are environment looks like:

• 200 employees, but only a sub set are hitting the servers at any one time
• 10.6.1 Portal (federated, web adapter) prod, test, dev
• 10.4.1 AGS prod, test, dev

The imminent need is to server a 65GB tile cache in both the 10.6.1 and 10.4.1 environments. 

[PeterBecker · Accepted solution]

I would recommend setting up a separate server that would be used as the Image Server. There are various advantages including ensuring that the connection to the data storage is more optimized and it is then easier to further scale if required.. From a licensing perspective it makes no difference. Note that if you are just serving tilecache then you do not need ImageServer. TileCache can be served directly from ArcGIS Server.

[forestknutsen1]

Thanks for the feedback Peter. Looks like we were confused. We thought that we could not create a cached image service without the extension. As, you point out this is not the case. I created one today.

We will look at setting up new server for just imagery in the future if we need the more advanced functions from the image server extension.