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I don't know why ESRI licensing is so complicated, has so many options, and is so very poorly explained. The cynic in me says this is to force any potential customer to start a conversation with a sales rep. and ultimately prompt more purchases.

Yes I've seen the documentation but it's next to useless in any real world scenario that doesn't involve a county government.

So if anyone can provide assistance with my specific needs I'd be extremely grateful. Unfortunately this is unlikely to help many others as slight variations in requirements could tip the scale in another direction.

My requirements:

  • ArcGIS Server (10) and ArcSDE installed on separate machines
  • ArcSDE enterprise geodatabase on Oracle 10gR2
  • Up to 100 concurrent web users requesting a mix of cached and non-cached data from ArcGIS Server
  • Single map server machine (at first) with 16 CPU cores - SOCs and SOM both on one machine

From the documentation I've seen restrictions that prevent deployments on multiple machines, but it doesn't specify if this means SOCs and SOM distributed across machines or ArcGIS Server and SDE on separate machines.

There are also limitations on the number of concurrent users, but if I have 100 web users accessing pooled services does this mean 100 users or as many users as pooled services?

I would be really happy if anyone can tell me what I need in this scenario. I currently have access to ArcGIS Server Enterprise Standard and I need to know in advance if it will support the scenario described above. (I think) I've already figured out that the 'Workgroup' option is no good for me.

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I think your best bet for an answer to this question is going to be picking up the phone and talking to an ESRI sales rep. I agree that their documentation can be very confusing when you are trying to sort through it yourself. A sales rep could put together a tailored quote for you and explain the terms and limitations likely better than someone on GISse, unless someone here is a sales rep for ESRI and wants to comment. – Get Spatial Sep 6 '12 at 1:38
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To follow up, I want to be clear that I've gotten price quotes when I made it clear I was not going to be purchasing, but simply needed the financials for budgeting purposes. I've never had their customer service staff be high pressure over the phone if you are just asking for information. – Get Spatial Sep 6 '12 at 1:40
A possible alternative is ArcGIS Server in the cloud - esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgisserver/system-requirements/… – Mapperz♦ Sep 6 '12 at 20:41
@Mapperz thanks, but the server already exists and is licensed - I'm just trying to figure out if the license will cover new functionality that's needed. – tomfumb Sep 6 '12 at 21:04

closed as too localized by Get Spatial, iant♦, whuber♦ Sep 6 '12 at 14:15

This question is unlikely to help any future visitors; it is only relevant to a small geographic area, a specific moment in time, or an extraordinarily narrow situation that is not generally applicable to the worldwide audience of the internet. For help making this question more broadly applicable, see the FAQ.

1 Answer

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Recently I have studied a little licensing options of ArcGIS Server and also have contacted their support.

From what I have understood:

  1. ArcGIS Server Enterprise license includes ArcSDE license (you can check it ECP license file). So it actually doesn't matter installing you it on the same machine or on the separate with ArcGIS Server. because it is a separate license string in ECP file and it has to be included into license of ArcGIS Server.
  2. You have to purchase appropriate number of ArcGIS Server licenses which will cover all available cores of your server machine. For your case of 16 cores machine you have to buy 16 cores license of ArcGIS Server. Reason: license of ArcGIS Server has no hardware restrictions. If you install 4 cores license on 16 cores machine, ArcGIS Server will actually use all available 16 cores for processing! But: it will be a violation of license agreement! So, licensing is more a legal question as I understood. How you can use less cores than your machine has:
    • Use virtualization. Setup virtual server on your 16 cores machine and give to it amount of cores according to your available license.
    • Use some software methods to restrict ArcGIS Server processes to specified amount of cores. But you should contact Esri and check if it is OK to their licensing rules.
  3. In order to preciselly determine how many users will serve your configuration you should build some test environment and perform load testing. It is quite hard to calculate it in advance as it is very dependent on data "nature". But you can also try to use Esri Capacity Planning Tool.

Check this good answer about licensing.

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