Tile Generation Value

[JeffDavis7]

Hello,

I would like to obtain an accurate estimate for the number of tiles that will be generated before I publish my tile service.

Does anyone know where I can locate this information before publishing?

Thank you.

[RobertScheitlin__GISP]

Jeff,

   When you go to publish the service on the Caching listing in the dialog there is a Calculate Cache Size button.

[JeffDavis7]

Hi Robert,

Yes.  I took your suggestion and am working on creating a tile service for my aerials.

Do you know how I may interpret the following statistics in determining the number of tiles?

[RobertScheitlin__GISP]

Jeff,

  I don't know of any tool that will give you number of tiles. The only thing that will be reported is size of the Level as you have in your attached image. Currious, why do you want to know the number of tiles? In today tiling world you actually get bundle package files and not individual tiles like in the past.

[JeffDavis7]

Good question.  Unfortunately, at present, our server is extremely short on available space so I am opting to have ArcGIS Online process the tiles.  I wanted to attempt to take a little of the guess-work out of the number of credits that will be consumed on the back end.

[RobertScheitlin__GISP]

Hmm. I don't know of a way to get the number of tiles. When I look on my server I see that I have one bundle file for L10, L11,L12,L13. L14 has 2 bundles, etc, etc

[JeffDavis7]

My dilemma is whether to go ahead add another LOD (564) to the cache and wondering if the difference between an estimated cache size of 1GB, using the ArcGIS Online/Bing/Google default, or adding the LOD increasing the estimated cache size to 4GB.  How this affects the credits on the back end will be key.  

[RobertScheitlin__GISP · Accepted solution]

Jeff,

   I know cache generation is a processor labor intensive operation and I would assume that it would be costly on credits. You may be better off getting IT to approve another U1 server or additional Hard drives for your server.

[JeffDavis7]

Agreed.  I think it could be a little on the costly side credit wise.  We have over 10,000 credits available but how much of a bite will the processing take out is the question.  Our server, while relatively new, needs to have an inventory taken of data residing and employ the D.A.M. approach of delete---archive---migrate.  This will be taking place in the next week or so once all participating parties are made aware.  In the mean time, I was hoping to move ahead with trying to get all my aerials running as tile services on AGO so that I may integrate the Bing Maps which are missing from my current equation like we have previously discussed.

[KellyGerrow]

Hey Jeff,

The cost of credits for tile generation has been reduced significantly, 1 credit per 10,000 tiles generated. You can generate 100,000,000 tiles for 10,000 credits (although that is a lot of tiles). I would recommend publishing a hosted feature layer and then generating a tile service from the feature layer. This enables you to take advantage of a few pieces of functionality that can keep your layer up to date and only generate the tiles that you need/are requested. If you only view one portion of your data, you won't be charged for the tiles that aren't created. On the settings tab of a tile service in AGOL, it will list the total tiles and the tiles published so you can understand where tiles have been created and how many tiles would be used if you pre-built all of the tiles.

This blog describes the functionality that is available when generating tiles automatically from feature layers:

Publishing tiles from features: efficient, automatic, and economical 

Publish hosted tile layers from hosted feature layers—ArcGIS Online Help | ArcGIS 

-Kelly