Publishing map services containing rasters very slow

[SimonRoss_User]

We're on ArcGIS Server 10.1 and find that publishing any map servcies that contain raster layers is very slow (an increases with the number of ratser layers in the map).  Publishing vector-only map servcie by comparison is extremely rapid.  We're not copying data to the server when publishing or creating caches.  It seems like the publishing should just be a simple process.  Where we use image services we have no comparable issues but this is not always possibel or preferred.

Any ideas on how we can speed up publishing?

[DaveBarrett]

Hi Craig,

Sorry its taken a while to get back to this, I have been looking into a few working theories and the latest that seems to have some weight to it is the folder depth the rasters are stored in.Too deep and the server won't read it hence using the staging folder. Some of our users have also commented that in some cases arcgis server doesnt seem to register all the subfolders in a registered folder. I haven't had a chance to test this but will post back when I have.

Dave

[SimonRoss_User]

William,

Thanks for the detailed response - it helped get to the rotue of the problem.  The paths within the raster catalog had not been updated (didn't realise that file GDB, unlike PGDB, does not support relative paths).  Setting the path to local server drive fixed the issue and published very quickly (we still have slow times with standalone file based rasters but can live with that for the time being)
Cheers