Our IT team are planning to replace our shared remote desktop server (RDP host). The new server will ONLY be used for people to connect and run ArcGIS Pro 3.2.
The IT team would like some clarification around the specs of the new machine to make sure we get it right. We have been unable to find specific answers to their questions in the ESRI documentation for which the specifications are for a single-user PC (ArcGIS Pro 3.2 system requirements—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation). Additionally, ESRI (Australia) support tells me "hardware specification recommendations for ArcGIS Pro ... falls outside the support we can provide" and "we are unable to provide information regarding hardware setups". then they recommended posting here instead. So here 'tis...
This host will service up to 10 users simultaneously. So we need to figure out how much RAM, CPU, GPU, etc, is appropriate for this kind of use. Please see our IT’s questions below:
These are specs we are thinking of, but wanting to know what you either recommend or what other clients that you know are running in similar situations:
- HPE DL360 Gen10 Plus
- 2x Xeon-S 4314 – 16 Cores @ 2.4Ghz per CPU (32 in total)
- 128GB DDR4 Ram
- MR416i Controller
- 2x 960GB MU SATA SSD
- SFP+ 10/25GbE NIC
- Nvidia T4 16GB GPU
* We are looking at setting up Hyper-V up on this server and run the Arc GIS Pro client on a virtual machine, being assigned 95% of the server resources as it will be the only VM.
Additional questions:
- Is 32 core sufficient or possible too much given we have the GPU?
- Is there much benefit or disadvantage in getting a faster CPU cores or consider a trade off for faster cores, but say less of them, eg. 16 Cores in total at 3.2Ghz per core.
- 128GB Ram, this will be perfectly fine for a few users, but will it be an issue for 6-10 users? – Or will the system mange what resources it has available?
- Nvidia T4 GPU – This looks like a great card, any issues that you are aware of with this card for this purpose?
If we are storing [much] of our GIS share data on this server (around 2TB worth [in file geodatabases]), is there any reported benefits or disadvantages of using SATA SSD vs SAS SSD vs NVMe SSD?
Are there any ArcGIS Pro users here with similar needs who can comment on what is working well for them? Specifically for around 10 simultaneous users on the one machine.
