I will soon have to plan where and how our raster data will be stored as we will be upgrading from ArcGIS 10.0 to ArcGIS 10.2. The following questions first need to be addressed before I can make any demands on my IT Department. The rasters which will be stored are mostly Aerial photos and Topographic Maps. Every year we get new datasets which will be added to the collection. Older versions of the maps will be held in the same database. I work in public administration where around 400 people use a browser based mapping client to call the data. Nobody needs write-Permissions for raster data apart from me.
Where? Using ArcGIS Server I presently have the option of either holding the raster in MSSQL-Server using SDE or holding them in a FGDB.
How should they be served? Direct connect or 3-Tiered as an sde service?
Other recommendations? ECW Format or TIFF? Rastercatalogs? Rastermosiacs? There seem to be many options available.
Could anyone offer some opinions?