Introduction
Image hosting is available with an ArcGIS Image Server deployment for sharing imagery within your organization or with the public. Hosted imagery layers can be used to manage and share raster and imagery data in your organization. You can also manage large collections of imagery and include imagery layers in hosted apps and maps.
Use your existing ArcGIS Image Server on-site or configure your deployment in a cloud environment such as ArcGIS Enterprise on Amazon Web Services or ArcGIS Enterprise on Microsoft Azure. The scalable environment of image hosting allows you to implement computationally intensive image processing that was previously unavailable or cost prohibitive.
Hosted imagery layers are different from raster tile layers. Raster tile layers support visualization of imagery and raster data but do not support analysis. Hosted imagery layers allow access to the imagery or raster data, including pixel or cell values across multiple raster bands, and multidimensional data.
Prerequisites
This document assumes you have already installed the necessary ArcGIS Enterprise components. These components include:
If you have not installed and deployed ArcGIS Enterprise, please refer to the Base ArcGIS Enterprise Deployment. To set one up, see Tutorial: Set up a base ArcGIS Enterprise deployment for more details.
Configure ArcGIS Image Server for image hosting
The image hosting site hosts the raster data store and manages the file share storage as well as the cloud storage, and distributes results according to portal member requests. The raster data store is not part of ArcGIS Data Store, but rather a registered file share, cloud store, or enterprise geodatabase federated with ArcGIS Enterprise. The raster data store is used by the raster analysis services to store output imagery optimized for reading, writing, and storage in a distributed format on-premises or in the cloud.
The advantage of configuring ArcGIS Image Server with three servers having distinct roles is to maximize efficiency and productivity. Separating distributed raster analysis processing and image service hosting roles enables resources to be dedicated to specific tasks without interruption. In this way, multiple users requesting access to various raster products and services do not compete for and impact raster analysis and image processing resources.
You need to set up and federate a second ArcGIS Image Server site to function as the image hosting server, which hosts all the distributed image services generated by the raster analysis server. It includes the raster data store configured with ArcGIS Image Server, which manages distributed file share storage and cloud storage of image services. The image hosting server stores and returns distributed results requested by members in the ArcGIS Enterprise portal. The image hosting server requires an ArcGIS Image Server license.
The instructions to set up and configure the image hosting server are detailed below.
Set up an ArcGIS Image Server image hosting site
The following instructions may require changes to the way you've deployed ArcGIS in your organization; review them carefully before proceeding.
Prerequisites
- Ensure that you have configured a base ArcGIS Enterprise deployment.
- Set up an ArcGIS Image Server.
- Install an additional ArcGIS Server site.
- Authorize ArcGIS GIS Serverwith an ArcGIS Image Server license to function as the ArcGIS Image Server site.
- Begin configuring ArcGIS Image Server by signing in to ArcGIS Server Manager and browse to Site > Data Stores.
- Register the raster data store with ArcGIS Image Server.
Raster analysis services store processed rasters in a data store, referred to as raster store. This can be either of the following:
- File share type of raster datastore—In this configuration, both the analysis output and the mosaic dataset will be stored at the file share raster store.
- Cloud store with file share type of raster datastore—In this configuration, the analysis output will be stored at the cloud raster store and the mosaic dataset will be stored at the file share raster store.
- Cloud store with enterprise geodatabase types of raster store—In this configuration, the analysis output will be stored at cloud raster store and the mosaic dataset will be stored at the enterprise geodatabase raster store.
Tip:
This type of configuration is recommended for better scalability for hosted imagery layers.
Note:
If an image hosting server is specified in your raster analytics deployment, and you want to publish an image service, the same raster store name with same path or connection details need to be registered in both your image hosting server and raster analysis server sites.
If the input data is accessed from your data stores, those data stores should be registered in both the raster analysis and image hosting servers.
- To use a folder, use ArcGIS Server Manager, register a UNC share in the data store, and give it a name.
Note:
If there are multiple instances of _raster_store defined, for example, raster_store1, raster_store2, and so on, raster analysis will randomly pick one for a task request.
- To use a cloud store, provide the access key, secret access key, region, and bucket name. The cloud store settings include subfolder support.
Note:
To use a cloud store as a raster store, the ArcGIS Server account user must have read, write, and delete permission on the cloud bucket to properly manage the data.
- Ensure that you have increased the SOC maximum heap size to 128 MB for ArcGIS Image Server.
Note:
To deploy your raster analysis server in the cloud with Amazon Web Services (AWS), see ArcGIS Enterprise Cloud Builder CLI for AWS. To deploy your raster analysis server in the cloud with Microsoft Azure, see Deploy ArcGIS Enterprise on Microsoft Azure.Federate and configure the server for image hosting
Next, you will designate the ArcGIS Image Server site to host your imagery layers.
- Sign in to the portal as a member with administrative privileges. The URL is in the format https://webadaptorhost.domain.com/<webadaptorname>/home.
- Browse to Organization > Settings > Servers.
- Federate your ArcGIS Server site.
- On the Servers page, locate the ArcGIS Image Server site that you federated with the portal.
- Open the Configure server role dialog by doing one of the following:
- Next to Server role, click the current server role or Configure server role if no role is currently assigned.
- Click the More options button
and select Configure server role.
- On the Configure server role dialog box, enable Image Hosting Server.
- Click Save.
Configure raster rendering services
It is recommended that you configure raster rendering service and increase the SOC maximum heap size.
ArcGIS Image Server raster rendering service have a default processing capacity configuration. You may need to customize this configuration based on your hardware configuration. Sign in to ArcGIS Server Manager, click Services, and open the System folder, where you can perform the following configurations:
To increase availability of the analytical results, increase the maximum instance of the RasterRendering service.
- Sign in to the ArcGIS GIS Server Administrator Directory using the URL format http://machine.domain.com:6443/arcgis/admin.
- From the directory home page, click machines.
- From the list of machines, select the first machine licensed with ArcGIS Image Server, whether it is used as an image hosting server or as a raster analytics server.
- In the Server Machine Properties menu, check the value for
SOC maximum heap size. If it is set to 64MB, click Edit in the
Supported Operations list.
The Edit Machine page appears.
- Change the value for SOC maximum heap size from 64MB to 128MB.
- Click Save Edits.
The server restarts.
- Repeat these steps for each machine in your deployment that is licensed with ArcGIS Image Server.