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ArcGIS Velocity in ArcGIS Enterprise

ArcGIS Velocity is a server component for processing real-time data, enabling real-time capabilities for ArcGIS Enterprise. Velocity can be deployed alongside other Enterprise components and feature capabilities. Enterprise licensing is required to obtain a Velocity license. Velocity uses component functionality from a base Enterprise deployment  while also enabling real-time capabilities for Enterprise.

Velocity is not a server licensing role of ArcGIS Server. It is a separate server altogether that requires its own license to allow the publication and operation of feeds, real-time analytics, and stream service items within an Enterprise deployment. It functions like the capability-based ArcGIS servers, but does not require ArcGIS Server itself. In this capacity, Velocity is different from ArcGIS GeoEvent Server as a real-time server. It does not require that ArcGIS Server be installed on a standalone machine as a precursor for installing Velocity. It is its own server deployment within an Enterprise deployment.

Portal for ArcGIS

Portal for ArcGIS is an Enterprise software component that has a central role in organizing and sharing information in your organization. This includes the organizing and sharing of feeds, real-time analytics, and stream services created by Velocity. Velocity uses a portal to manage the real-time items it creates. Velocity also uses a portal to manage access control to the Velocity web app. This is handled through users, groups, and privileges. Velocity must be federated with an Enterprise portal, which enables these capabilities.

ArcGIS Server

ArcGIS Server can be licensed and configured to provide different capabilities for an Enterprise. An ArcGIS server can fulfill the necessary role of an Enterprise’s hosting server by being licensed as a GIS server and configured with an ArcGIS data store (relational) to act as the system’s managed geodatabase. This setup enables service publication in an Enterprise deployment and is what Velocity requires and uses when publishing its own hosted map or feature services for storing and visualizing real-time data. Velocity must be federated with an Enterprise portal that has been configured with a hosting server. This is what enables service publication capabilities and the ability to store data in the managed databases configured with the hosting server.

ArcGIS relational data store

The relational data store is a data store type available in ArcGIS Data Store. When installing or configuring ArcGIS Data Store, you can enable the relational data store as a managed data store. This data store is required by an Enterprise deployment to establish a hosting server that can store data in hosted feature layers.

Velocity can store low-volume, low-velocity real-time data in a relational data store. This might be a couple of dozen feature records every second, or a few hundred feature records every few minutes. Higher rates of data should be stored using the spatiotemporal big data store.

Note:

While Velocity can write data to a relational data store, it is important to remember that real-time operations can be input/output operations per second (IOPS) intensive. The relational data store might drop feature records from high velocity streams. Similarly, storing large volumes of real-time data might impact the query performance of other Enterprise apps needing to share the same relational data store.

ArcGIS spatiotemporal big data store

The spatiotemporal big data store is a data store type available in ArcGIS Data Store. When installing or configuring ArcGIS Data Store, you can enable the spatiotemporal big data store as a managed data store. The spatiotemporal big data store is recommended when you need to store high-volume, high-velocity data coming from Velocity in the form of hundreds to thousands of feature records every few seconds, or in some cases, every second.

Enable the spatiotemporal big data store on a separate machine. For example, a typical deployment is to install the components of an Enterprise deployment (Portal for ArcGIS, ArcGIS Server, and ArcGIS Data Store) on one machine.  ArcGIS Server is typically licensed as a GIS server and ArcGIS Data Store configured to provide a relational database  that ArcGIS Server uses as its managed geodatabase. This fulfills the role of a hosting server for the Enterprise portal. On a second machine, typically, you install ArcGIS Data Store again and configure the spatiotemporal big data store. Part of configuring the spatiotemporal big data store is registering it with the hosting server.

The spatiotemporal big data store supports distributed, scalable storage using a fault tolerant configuration across multiple machines. For production deployments handling high-volume, high-velocity data, it is recommended to deploy multiple spatiotemporal big data stores to obtain these benefits.

On a third machine, you install and license Velocity. Velocity is federated with the Enterprise portal and obtains the ability to publish hosted feature services using the spatiotemporal big data store by way of the Enterprise hosting server.

For more information, refer to the following related topics: