Single Raster or Multiple Rasters in a Mosiac Dataset

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08-11-2019 01:16 PM
deleted-user-yC5VkbyXzrQR
Occasional Contributor

Can anyone guide me to some articles or give your opinion about whether to use a single raster or split the raster up to multiple rasters and create a Mosaic Data-set. 

I have a national NWI wetland raster I created thats about ~50 Gbs. I was trying to figure out the most efficient way to use this data. 

The data will be used across our team for viewing purposes and maybe some anaylsis on it. We will also have our internal colleges access it through ArcGIS Online/Portal. We want them to be able to export the data as well. 

Any help would be appreciated. 

Thanks !  

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2 Replies
PeterBecker
Esri Regular Contributor

What is best depends on many factors. 1st what is the input and how often is it updated. If you already have the dataset as a single raster (Eg TIF) and it does not get updated often then it would be best to leave as a single dataset. There are optimizations you could perform in terms of the format an compression. TIF is good, but look to use compression such as Deflate/LZW for categorical data. CRF is a format in ArcGIS that is more optimized for such large datasets. It also includes LERC as a controlled loss compression and an further reduce the file size. The way CRF is written enables multiple processors to write simultaneously to the file. Its also very efficient to read. If you have the data as many files or different parts of the dataset may change over time then the recommendation would be to possibly optimize each of the input files (see OptimizeRasters), but then create a mosaic dataset that can be used to maintain not only the latest version, but also the updates to the different files. Mosaic datasets also have the advantage at ensuring the data does not get unnecessarily reprojected if the source comes in different projection. The mosaic dataset can be used directly or published as an image service. Also consider creating a mosaic dataset of the inputs, then doing any necessary QA of the data and then exporting the complete dataset as a CRF.

For access within Enterprise, you can put the CRF on a shared directory or better publish it as an image service. For ArcGIS Online it is currently not possible to publish such rasters but you could create a tilecache of  a rendering of the data and publish that.

deleted-user-yC5VkbyXzrQR
Occasional Contributor

Awesome thanks for the reply! 

I'll read up on some of these file compression and stuff that I'm unaware of. 

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