ArcGIS Sever In The Cloud Gets A Little Closer

Posted At : August 26, 2009 10:49 AM | Posted By : Jason
Related Categories: Cloud, ArcGIS Server

I just opened up my inbox to an announcement from Amazon. Looks like they are continuing to push their cloud computing services. Now this one can make all the difference for us GIS nerds. Its called Virtual Private Cloud. Giving it a quick read, it looks like you'll me able to add an Amazon Cloud based server to your existing network, via a standard VPN connection. Here are the details from Amazon:

* Create a Virtual Private Cloud on AWS's scalable infrastructure, and specify its private IP address range from any block you choose.

* Divide your VPC's private IP address range into one or more subnets in a manner convenient for managing applications and services you run in your VPC.

* Bridge together your VPC and your IT infrastructure via an encrypted VPN connection.

* Add AWS resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances, to your VPC.

* Route traffic between your VPC and the Internet over the VPN connection so that it can be examined by your existing security and networking assets before heading to the public Internet.

* Extend your existing security and management policies within your IT infrastructure to your VPC as if they were running within your infrastructure.

The first thing that came to my mind was spinning up ArcSOC servers to handle additional load if your main box (on your own physical network) gets swamped. Just add a new SOC server (an EC2 instance) to your existing ArcGIS Server. I have no idea if the network latency would be an issue in a distributed environment like this, but I suspect it will be. I'm going to test this out as soon as I can and will report back.

You could move your entire ArcGIS server operation up to the cloud, but as we have discussed before, it can be prohibitively expensive to do so. With this new method, you can bring them online only when you really need them. I'm sure James Fee has 'ArcGIS Server Cloud' setup as a Google Alert...so what do you think James?

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I've also thought about ArcGIS Server in an elastic computing model. The trouble is that esri does not have a cloud licensing option; therefore, spinning up N instances would be technically illegal.

# Posted By Brad | 8/26/09 1:09 PM

Technically speaking, ESRI better get with the program.

# Posted By Jason Harris | 8/26/09 1:13 PM

Brad's right, most ESRI licensing options don't currently allow for use of elasticity; however, you can still leverage the cloud with ArcGIS Server... it just has to be billed differently.

Instead of usage-based billing like Amazon, we have a "subscription-based" Cloud where you purchase the usage of a certain amount of computing resources in our cloud, install your applications, and let them roar. When your monitoring tools tell you that you need to increase/decrease your resources based on usage, you can do that instantly from a control panel.

Our clients also like the fact that they know exactly what they are going to pay every month (a requirement for most organizations). Obviously this isn't "pure cloud elasticity," but it is predictable and the scalability functionality meets most client's needs... until the licensing changes, then it's on!

We are currently implementing a project for a multi-national application that uses our cloud to "Cloud-burst" their co-located "traditional" hardware/application architecture.

Ryan - skygoneinc.com

# Posted By Ryan | 8/26/09 5:19 PM

The biggest issue I see with hosting your ArcGIS Server in this cloud is cost. AWS Windows server costs can rocket out of control. I'm not sure unless you get scaling, why wouldn't you just host it with a provider down the road where you could drop in?

Now scaling ArcGIS Server Java in Amazon's cloud, that is interesting. ;)

# Posted By James Fee | 8/26/09 5:25 PM

After finding out that ESRI is charging for any commercial use of there web api's, I wouldn't even bother with ArcGIS Server. I would go all open source with MapServer instances on top of PostGIS databases.

# Posted By Donny V | 8/26/09 6:50 PM

I have to agree with Donny. If you need the elasticity of Amazon, and want to save money, ArcGIS server is out of the question in the first place. Use geoserver/postgis and just be done with it.

# Posted By Adam Conner | 8/27/09 11:13 AM

Yeah, I can understand if you have no money, ArcGIS Server is certainly out of the question to begin with. However, if you are like me and my clients, you do have money. And are an ESRI shop with real workflows, etc. Going the open source route isnt an option for us. It plenty appropriate for lots of folks, and thats why it has a great following. That all being said...I run and develop on the ESRI stack. I like it. Its fast and it works.

Running AGS totally from the cloud isnt economically feasible as we have all pointed out. However, using it when you need to offload traffic from your main box, it makes perfect sense. If you get slashdotted or dugg like we recently did, having a couple of EC2 instances would have been great to have, and I would have only needed to pay for a couples of days worth.

# Posted By Jason Harris | 8/27/09 11:32 AM

I agree that ESRI software is great. 90% of my work uses it. The big problem is, in order to have the ability to spin up 2 instances when you were dugg, you would have needed to already own or quickly purchase 2 extra AGS licenses and the cost of that makes any cost savings from using ec2 seem of little consequence.

# Posted By Adam Conner | 8/27/09 12:11 PM

@Adam...You are right on the money. The problem now is licensing costs. Hopefully dialogs such as these will get read by the right folks. Some type of temporary/cloud licensing option would be key here.

# Posted By Jason Harris | 8/27/09 12:36 PM

I rekon Jack/ESRI know that the 'cloud' needs to be adopted into their licensing model. Id imagine we might see some changes when 9.4 comes along.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/04/jack-dangermond-i...

# Posted By Simon | 8/28/09 10:56 AM

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