Hi Jeff,
Thanks for the response. My operational layers are in WGS_1984_Web_Mercator_Auxillary_Sphere, and the ESRI basemap layers are in "Mercator_Auxillary_Sphere". Since the geoprocessing tool works on my local computer, I would think that the projections are ok.
I've tried a few ESRI basemap layers (World Street Map, and World Imagery)...it also takes a couple minutes to export this very simple PDF...which might be a clue. Perhaps when I run the export tool, it starts making requests for the tiles and there's some kind of delay or as you said needs a proxy or something. The thing is all the messages look ok ("successful,etc")...no timeouts that I can see.
Seems to be some kind of difference with how a geoprocessing tool is run through arc catalog vs through the REST service...any idea on how to test/debug this further?
It runs so quickly on my laptop through arc catalog, but through the REST service it takes a couple minutes...hrmmmmm.
thanks,
Dan