For the sake of transparency, as well as to ensure our users are aware, the Arkansas GIS Office will soon begin a series of maintenance processes to the gis.arkansas.gov platform. The aim is to make the platform more responsive to the amount of traffic its receiving.  Secondarily, these steps will save money when utilization is lower by scaling in and removing unneeded Server resources during periods of reduced demand.    We anticipate no action will be required of our users, and these updates should occur silently, with no impact on day to day uses of the platform. However, as we have all experienced with technology upgrades there is always the chance of an unanticipated issue and we want to make sure the users of gis.arkansas.gov and other GIS Office hosted applications are aware of that possibility. Nonetheless we will strive to ensure there is minimal to no downtime, and all updates will be tested thoroughly in a development environment to ensure proper function before being implemented in the production environment and being made live.

These updates will include:

Migrating feature & map services from SQL Server 2012 to PostGres 9.6  where applicable  – Completed tentatively by May 17th

Update ArcServer from 10.5 to 10.6  –  This update is necessary in order move Image Service caches.  Completed tentatively by May 24th

Migrating Image/Map Service caches from Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Block Storage (EBS) server attached SSD storage to AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) Completed tentatively by May 31st

Migrating our WordPress MySQL database that runs our e-commerce platform at gis.arkansas.gov to the dedicated database server.  Completed tentatively by May 31st

Implementing Autoscaling. This is the game changer, and all updates listed above are solely to make this type of implementation possible. With autoscaling the gis.arkansas.gov platform will be able to scale out (add servers) or scale in (remove servers) completely dependent upon demand.  The way the current architecture is configured the same amount of server resources are provisioned at 2 pm on a Tuesday afternoon as are provisioned at 2 am on Sunday morning.  It goes without saying that we have significantly more traffic during the former period as opposed to the latter, and users will be better served with an architecture that can appropriately respond to those changes in demand. Additionally, this configuration will facilitate our ability to quickly provision additional resources in the event of a crisis or natural disaster. Completion is currently to be determined, but we are anticipating implementation not later than June 30th, 2021 assuming there are no unforeseen issues preventing us from completing the upgrades within the aforementioned timelines.

To reiterate all changes will be vetted and tested to ensure that we prevent and/or minimize downtime during these updates.  We appreciate your patience as we make our platform better, faster, stronger and more cost effective. Any questions, concerns or observations can be directed to communication@arkansasgisoffice.org.

Arkansas GIS Office Staff