Scale the tile cache data store to meet scene layer demands

It is not uncommon to publish hosted scene layers that use a lot of disk space. In some cases, you also need to publish a large number of hosted scene layers. Two machines often do not suffice to store all these scene layer caches. To support scene layer scalability requirements, ArcGIS Data Store 10.8 allows you to create tile cache data stores that contain multiple machines. If you find your tile cache data store machines are nearing capacity and you need to publish more scene layers, you can add more machines to the tile cache data store. New scene layer caches will be stored on the new machines.

This new multimachine implementation means the following is now true for tile cache data stores:

• There are no longer primary and standby tile cache data store machines, and scene services are not restricted to reading caches from a single machine.
• You must open port 29079 in the firewalls of the tile cache data store machines to allow them to communicate with one another.
• For a highly available tile cache data store, deploy all the tile cache data store machines before you and your portal members publish hosted scene layers.
• If a machine fails in the tile cache data store and you need to replace it, you'll need to rebalance the tile cache data store content. This process takes advantage of new messaging on the ArcGIS Server validate REST command and uses a new replicatedata option on the restoredatastore utility.

Define multiple backup locations for tile cache data stores

You can define multiple backup locations for the tile cache data store, including file shares, Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) buckets, and Microsoft Azure Blob storage containers.

As a result of this change, the following is true for tile cache data stores:

• Newly created tile cache data stores do not have a default location; you must define a backup location before any backups can be created for a new tile cache data store.
• Before you upgrade a tile cache data store to ArcGIS Data Store 10.8, ensure the tile cache data store has a shared location set for the backup location. If it does not, you must register a new backup location for the tile cache data store after you upgrade, and the new location must be a shared location.

Map image layers can communicate directly with the relational or spatiotemporal big data store

Owners of hosted feature layers and hosted spatiotemporal feature layers in an ArcGIS Enterprise 10.8 portal can add one of these layers to a map in ArcGIS Pro 2.5 and publish a map image layer. This allows feature layer owners to make their hosted feature data available to others on a truly read-only basis. Once published, the map image layer connects directly to the data in the underlying data store: the relational data store if a hosted feature layer was in the map or the spatiotemporal big data store if a hosted spatiotemporal feature layer was in the map.

Improved publishing times for hosted feature layers

Various improvements were made to decrease the amount of time it takes to publish hosted feature layers when your relational data store already contains a lot of data.