Geocode Service Dependency Question with ArcGIS Server

[MatthewStull1]

My GIS Analyst and were discussing today whether a geocode service has dependencies after it is published to a standalone ArcGIS Server.  Here is what our environments look like:

We have two standalone ArcGIS servers (version 11.1).  One of these servers has the locator (.loc) files on it.  We published a geocode service to the other ArcGIS server (the one without the locator files on it) using the locator files on the server that does have them.  We used the setting to copy all the files to the server during the publishing.  Our question is, if the server with the locator files goes down or goes away for whatever reason, would the geocode service on the other server (the one without the locator files) stop working?  in other words, is it dependent on those locator files on the other server to work?   I hope that makes sense.

My Analyst says that there are dependencies (meaning that any service published with those locator files would go down if the locator files went away or were unavailable).  I am not so sure since it is copying the files during the publishing process.  This makes me believe that it wouldn't have any dependencies.  Thoughts?  Thank you for your resposne.

[MichaelJenkins · Accepted solution]

You are 100% correct, the second server will have no dependecies on the first sever because you chose the 'copy files to server' option.   

If you had not done that, then the second server would need access to the files and you would need to register a folder connection from that server to the file location.

Something else to keep in mind, though, is that those locators are static snapshots of the data.   Even if you connected to data on an enterprise geodatabase as the source for your locator, the locator files do not maintain a connection to that data source.  Any updates you make to the data will require you to "rebuild" the locator for it to see that new data.  Since you 'copied to server' your locator files, you would have to rebuild a local copy of the locator file and then overwrite that locator service in order to update it.

[MatthewStull1]

Thanks for the quick reply!  That's exactly what I wanted to know.