What’s New in ArcGIS Image Dedicated (August 2024)

ArcGIS Image Dedicated  is a managed software as a service (SaaS) to manage, serve, process, and analyze imagery and rasters directly from AWS or Azure cloud storage. Esri manages the dedicated servers, compute infrastructure and software ensuring scalability and reducing egress.

ArcGIS Image Dedicated is updated quarterly. For the latest discussion on Image Dedicated please check out the Esri Community page on ArcGIS Image Dedicated here.

The following are the key highlights and enhancements of the August 2024 release of ArcGIS Image Dedicated.

Improved User Experience

  • An Account Summary chiclet has been added for administrators to view the account detail parameters including the remaining Image Dedicated Credits. This enables administrators to predict when additional credits are required to ensure uninterrupted work.
  • Administrators can also set the default cloud environment and the region from the Account Summary chiclet. These default settings apply across the site. This simplifies the user experience in organizations that work predominantly in one cloud or region.
  • Administrators can enable/disable the Processing and Analysis tasks and control access to the tasks through shared items in ArcGIS Online.
  • The Processing and Analysis tab lists all the tasks enabled organization-wide. In addition, it displays if the user is authorized to execute a particular task. This provides the user with a ready dashboard of tasks he can execute.
  • Email notifications on task execution status are available. Users can choose to Subscribe or Unsubscribe to Email Notifications. The users are notified by email if a task is completed or failed.
  • An interactive catalogue of the Processing and Analysis APIs is provided in the documentation section. The key purpose is to aid the exploration of endpoints, parameters, and responses of the API in detail before their use. Developers can benefit from a better understanding of how to automate tasks.

Pro Machine Enhancements

  • Pro machines with ArcGIS Pro 3.3 can be started in addition to the existing version of ArcGIS Pro. ArcGIS Pro 3.3 is now the default version.
  • Additional disk storage can be added to an existing pro machine. This enables users to add additional storage when a project gets larger than expected. Image Dedicated Credits will be consumed based on the size of the additional disk storage.

Dynamic and Tiled Imagery

  • Users can use the Set System Service Settings geoprocessing tool (ArcGIS Image Dedicated Service Management geoprocessing toolbox) to configure the number of instances per machine for the Raster Rendering Service. The Raster Rendering Service can use a shared pool of compute processes to serve many dynamic image services using limited resources. By default, the minimum and maximum number of shared instances per machine are eight. Previously, it was not possible to configure the instance settings of the service.
  • Users can use the Set System Service Settings geoprocessing tool (ArcGIS Image Dedicated Service Management geoprocessing toolbox) to configure the number of instances per machine for the Tile Services Shared Instance Pool. The Tile Services Shared Instance Pool shares multiple services from a pool of resources. This strikes an optimal balance between performance and memory usage. Unlike the minimum-to-maximum range of instances required by dedicated pools, the shared pool requires a fixed number of instances. By default, the number of shared instances per machine is eight. Previously, users were not allowed to update this value.
  • The workflow to publish a tile service using the tile cache dataset to the tile imagery server in earlier versions of  ArcGIS Image Dedicated required the users to follow precise conventions regarding cloud storage folder structure, and tile cache folder naming conventions.  Currently, a new input dataset, Raster Tiles (. tiles), is supported with no mandate conventions. The users can readily extract raster tiles to any folder in the cloud storage and use it as an input dataset to create a tile service in the tiled imagery server.
  • Users can take offline the tile service created using Raster Tiles (. tiles). This requires a couple of mandate settings in the properties of the “root. json” file. Once the changes are made these tile services can be used in ArcGIS Field Maps to create offline map areas either ahead of time or on demand.
  • Users can now publish Vector tiles (. vtiles) extracted from a vector tile package(.vtpk) using the Extract Package tool and stored in the cloud storage as a vector tile service to the Tiled imagery server. Vector tiles (. vtiles) contain vector representations of data across a range of scales.
  • Users can publish a tile cache, generated from an elevation dataset using the Elevation tiling scheme, as a tiled image service to a tiled imagery server. This can then be used as a custom elevation layer in ArcGIS.
  • ArcGIS Image Dedicated Service Management Geoprocessing Toolbox supports versioning. When the user runs a GP tool, there is an automatic check to confirm if the version is the most recent. If found not recent, the user is notified with the details of the available updates and where the recent version of the tool can be downloaded.
  • Dynamic and Tiled Imagery Servers can be upgraded to ArcGIS Server version 11.3. To upgrade an existing server, you can submit an upgrade request. The ArcGIS Image Dedicated team will set up a server using a defined DNS name and notify you via email. Within the 7-day trial period, you should test and confirm that the DNS swap should be performed or place a hold due to an identified issue. After the DNS swap, the old server will be deleted.