Latest Contributions by JoshuaBixby

There are several registry entries related to licensing, not just AUTHORIZATION_TYPE.  My recommendation would be to delete the following registry keys under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, doing so will reset the CONCURRENT_USE licensing for that user and prompt a user to login to a Portal or arcgis.com to get a Named User license.  AUTHORIZATION_TYPE LICENSE_SERVER SEAT_PREFERENCE SOFTWARE_CLASS_FN All the keys but AUTHORIZATION_TYPE will be recreated for the user and set to default.  Since the AUTHORIZATION_TYPE default has been NAMED_USER for a while now, it likely won't even get re-created. NOTE:  Like anything involving registry changes, either backup the registry key involved or make sure you validate on test machines before deploying. ... View more

If you run into issues with vertical scaling, one area I have seen people run into problems is managing memory, both physical and virtual, at the OS level.  ArcSOC processes have a surprisingly large virtual memory footprint relative to their physical memory use, and when scaling RAM up to accommodate more services, I have seen virtual memory sizing and use become a problem.  Without knowing a lot more details about the application and OS configuration and spec's, I can't really offer any specifics.  ... View more

Another aspect of why vertical scaling makes sense more than horizontal is licensing.  I have always worked in large government organizations that deploy lots of what I refer to as "big brother" software, i.e., configuration management software, security software, monitoring software, etc....  Don't get me wrong, these types of applications are needed in today's environments whether they are small business or large government.  As needed as they are, they consume resources and increase the amount of resources a machine needs compared to an idealized, bare-bones OS. For a previous organization I worked for, the rule of thumb was the first 2 vCPU were basically throw-away vCPU to support running all the big-brother software.  This was more to do with poor management of the software by operations teams than the software itself.  So, if capacity planning shows you would want 4 vCPU for a VM, we always spec'ed 6 to ensure the application would always have roughly 4 vCPU worth of capacity available.  ArcGIS Server (not Portal, but Server itself) is licensed per core.  Unlike some enterprise software like SQL Server where the cores can be set in the application, ArcGIS Server licenses all the cores on a machine. For situations like the one I describe where a certain number of vCPUs are set aside for other operations software on the machine, and yet those vCPU are still licensed for ArcGIS Server, horizontal scaling drives up licensing costs much quicker than vertical licensing because each new machine has those marginally used but still licensed vCPUs whereas adding more cores to an existing machine allows having the application use all those new cores. Regarding @Scott_Tansley comment about segmenting workflows into other ArcGIS Server sites, I agree, at least for medium to large customers.  Each type of GIS service has its own unique patterns of use, both from the end-user consuming the service to the service consuming machine resources, and mixing them in large numbers often results in resource utilization and contention issues and capacity planning headaches. ... View more

I agree with @MichaelVolz .  ArcGIS 10.8.1 is fully retired in 2 months, 08/01/2026.  Besides the imminent retirement of that version, there are also practical issues you will run into.  Although it may technically work, trying to publish GIS services from ArcGIS Pro to older versions like ArcGIS 10.8.1 will lead to problems.  You won't be able to publish GP services, and there is risk of corrupt or unexpected results in map and image services. ... View more

I agree that ArcGIS Enterprise Functionality Matrix doesn't do a good job of explaining ArcGIS Enterprise Kubernetes functionality.  There are statements about ArcGIS Enterprise Kubernetes, but they are more along the lines of "see this" or "see that" for information rather than clearly stating how Kubernetes functionality relates. That said, it seems like a simple question being asked, but it is hard to answer without knowing more of what you are really after.  For example, since ArcGIS Enterprise on Kubernetes can federate with regular ArcGIS Server deployments, one needs to know whether someone's requirement is to only deploy in Kubernetes or whether a hybrid approach is allowed.  If hybrid is allowed, than a lot more functionality and features are possible. The other complication is that the underlying architecture of deploying ArcGIS Enterprise on Windows or Linux vs Kubernetes is fundamentally different.  Esri may make the REST APIs match, and the browser apps look and function the same, but under the hood they are very differently structured.  Because of this, Esri will sometime use terms like "equivalence" instead of "parity," and they focus more on describing outcomes and workflows than features and functionality when talking about the two types of architecture. Overall, I agree with the sentiment that Esri does not do a great job helping customers understand the difference.  Also, I really don't care for blogs as being "official" documentation, but the "Summary of Supported Functionality" in the What's New in ArcGIS Enterprise 12.0 on Kubernetes blog is about as authoritative as I have seen. ... View more

Browser-based, Web GIS apps built on JavaScript will not "see" fonts installed on servers or local computers.  These kinds of apps stream vector fonts over the web, so simply installing a new font on a machine doesn't make it available to them.  ArcGIS Pro is a desktop app that has direct permission to read standard font files installed on the local machine, so installing a font on a machine does make it available to ArcGIS Pro while not making it available to browser-based, web GIS apps. If you are interested in working with custom fonts for Esri's JavaScript-based apps, it would be good to read Font | References | ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript.  It discusses the format fonts need to be in and where and how the apps look for and get fonts. ... View more

Can you describe your data schema and some examples in text here?  Can you also share the SQL that each query is generating?  A video is better than a screenshot, but I personally won't usually take the time to watch a video, and I am guessing there are plenty others on the forum that do the same, or don't in this case. ... View more

Assuming the context manager change with cursors was partially, or hopefully, driven by improving lock handling; I am a supported of the change.  Regarding resetting a cursor, although instantiating a new cursor may be the right decision, existing cursors can be re-used within a context manager.  That is, one doesn't have to create a new cursor if they want to reset a cursor and re-use with a context manager. ... View more

You could publish the same service using a different back-end data source, e.g., file GDB instead of SQL Server, to see if the issue is isolated to a particular type of data source. ... View more

When applying multiple patches, the more efficient and effective approach is to use msiexec | Microsoft Learn multiple patch option: /update Install patches option. If you're applying multiple updates, you must separate them using a semi-colon (;). Using this approach you can apply 2, 3, or 4 patches in nearly the same time as a single patch, and even applying 10-15 patches only takes a minute or two longer than a single patch.  Plus, using this approach ensures patches are installed in the proper order because the MSI installer takes care of sorting out order using MsiPatchSequence embedded in the MSP files. ... View more

It would be more helpful if you shared details.  For example, what happened in one specific instance and what did you expect to happen?  What is the structure of the data set and what was the selection criteria you used? When it comes to AI, trust but verify.  Without knowing anything about your data, your workflow, and what you asked Copilot specifically; it is hard to give much weight to a warning like this. ... View more

@SimonSchütte_ct , the Esri Support article linked to is less "deauthorizing" and more "disabling."  Deauthorizing implies returning the license, which is what happens on the desktop side, and renaming the local keycodes file doesn't return anything to Esri.  And cancelling a license file isn't exactly the same as deauthorizing licenses either.  Cancelling a license file does return activations back to the pool, which is the same outcome as deauthorizing a license, but not all ArcGIS Server licenses are activated using a license file. For me I see the links as workarounds to Esri not having a proper deauthorization mechanism for ArcGIS Server licenses, which is why I voted for this idea, but as I already mentioned I won't hold my breath they will ever create a proper deauthorization mechanism for ArcGIS Server licenses. ... View more

I will upvote this idea, but I am definitely not holding my breath.  My last job was working for a large federal government agency with a sizeable Enterprise Agreement.  This issue was raised to Esri multiple times over 10+ years (could even be 20), and Esri expressed no interest in supporting deauthorization of ArcGIS Server licenses. ... View more