Storage and Time Estimation for Caching

To get an overview of cache calculation time, cache size on storage and number of files in the file system, it is useful to pre-cache a sample cache of a small extend:

•Create a shape of one square mile of a representative area (area with a representative amount of objects, symbology, labels and ratio of vector and raster data).

•Create a cache for your tiling scheme (be sure to use the same file format as for the final cache) and document the needed time.

•Navigate to your cache folder (e.g. c:\arcgisserver\arcgiscache) and document file amount and full cache size on storage (There is one folder per cached map service. In this folder a folder for each scale level is included. The naming is “L00” for the smallest scale, “L01” for the next bigger scale, and so on. E.g. c:\arcgisserver\arcgiscache\MyMapService\Cache\_allayers\L00).

•Calculate the needed disk space, file amount and caching time for your full extent. You can calculate these parameters for each scale level and thus decide which scale level should be the biggest.

For more details on caching see ArcGIS Server Help, map caching section: http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisserver/9.3.1/dotNet/what_is_map_caching.htm.