Geodatabases and ArcGIS Server on Amazon EC2

Geodatabases store spatial and nonspatial data. That data can be used as the source data for ArcGIS Server web services. You can use file, workgroup, or enterprise geodatabases with the services you publish from ArcGIS Server on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

File and workgroup geodatabases can be created on the ArcGIS Server EC2 instance. To use enterprise geodatabases, launch an enterprise geodatabase (EGDB) instance and connect to it from your ArcGIS Server EC2 instance.

Once your file or workgroup geodatabase is created or your EGDB instance is launched and a connection established, you must load your data into it. See Strategies for data transfer to Amazon EC2 and Strategies for loading data into a geodatabase on Amazon EC2 for suggestions on how to get your data to your geodatabases in the cloud.

The following sections summarize licensing requirements for using each type of geodatabase and how to provide the ArcGIS SOC account with access to the geodatabase, which is required to use the geodatabase with ArcGIS Server. For more information on preparing geodatabases to use with services, see the ArcGIS Server Help topic Preparing resources for publishing as services.

Enterprise geodatabases

If you have an ArcGIS Server Enterprise license, you can use the EGDB Amazon Machine Image (AMI) to create an EGDB EC2 instance. This instance contains an ArcSDE for PostgreSQL geodatabase with four preconfigured database users and sample data. See What is enterprise geodatabase on Amazon EC2? and its related topics for more information.

To use an enterprise geodatabase for your web service source data, the .sde connection file must be stored in a directory to which the SOC account has access. The SOC account does not have access to the location in which the .sde file is created (C:\Users\<Windows_login>\AppData\Roaming\ESRI\Desktop 10.0\ArcCatalog). Therefore, you should move the file to a directory to which the SOC account does have access.

Workgroup geodatabases

If you have an ArcGIS Server Workgroup license, you can create workgroup geodatabases on a Microsoft SQL Server Express instance. This SQL Server Express instance is provided with the ArcGIS Server AMI and is already enabled to store geodatabases. You must add the instance (referred to as a database server in ArcGIS) to ArcCatalog to use it.

To use a workgroup geodatabase for your web service source data, you must add the ArcGIS SOC account login to the database server after you add the database server to ArcCatalog.

See Workgroup geodatabases in the cloud for more information on using workgroup geodatabases with an ArcGIS Server EC2 instance.

File geodatabases

File geodatabases can be used with both ArcGIS Server Workgroup and Enterprise licenses. For information on file geodatabases, see the topics in the ArcGIS Server Help section Managing file and personal geodatabases.

Grant access to the SOC account on the folder (or folders) that contain your file geodatabases so you can publish services using the data they contain.