System Architecture Design for GIS
Steve Garfield
Reliant Energy
PO Box 1700
Houston, Texas 77251-1700
Dave Peters
Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI)
380 New York Street
Redlands, California 92373
Abstract
Geographic information systems (GIS) are supporting a growing number of operational
environments, taking advantage of distributed architecture and providing digital mapping solutions
throughout electric- and gas-use environments. Hardware and networking technology is supporting
a growing number of solutions, extending user access to company business systems from remote
field operations to central boardrooms. Software solutions integrate business operations from the
field to the desktop, providing direct connectivity to integrated database environments across the
enterprise. Proper hardware and network support for distributed GIS computing is growing in
importance. Understanding the available technology and design methodology to support and
manage distributed computing environments provides a foundation for successful operational
environments.
This paper provides an update on current distributed GIS architecture solutions, and the current state
of GIS-based enterprise operations. Reliant Energy will present an overview of their ArcFM 8
implementation supporting distributed edit operations with remote Windows Terminal Server (WTS)
clients and replicated ArcSDE data servers supporting remote plotting requirements. A
methodology for addressing distributed GIS operations is provided in a System Design Strategies
white paper available at http://www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/sysdesig.pdf.
System Architecture Design for GIS
(Reliant Energy GIS Migration)
Steve Garfield is responsible for a team of three who provide system support for servers for the
GIS department of Reliant Energy. Steve’s team provides system administration support for
Citrix, NT/2000, Sun Solaris, Web, multiple Oracle and Sybase databases, and over a terabyte of
combined storage.
Reliant Energy is a multi-national energy company with gas and electric distribution facilities
located in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Minnesota. Reliant Energy
is headquartered in Houston, Texas, and has over 14,000 employees. Over 1,174,140 electric
customers and 972,000 gas customers are located in the Houston area alone.
The GIS department, managed by Jeff Myerson, is responsible for the digitizing, maintenance,
and map production of GIS data for Reliant Energy. The GIS department also provides
addressing for the City of Houston and several surrounding municipalities. The GIS department
has over 80 staff including digitizers, support desk, technical support and management,
supporting a full spectrum of GIS services to the company. GIS is a full support organization
that works within the infrastructure provided by the IT department.
GIS Migration
In 1997, Reliant Energy was well along in a process to determine the best way to upgrade their
existing GIS environment. Reliant was looking to implement an enterprise solution, and had
several caveats that had to be met by the software infrastructure. A partnership was established
with the selected vendor to develop this solution. The original suggested specifications are still
in place and working well, even though some of the initial GIS software were a beta release.
The GIS shop consists of a mixed environment. Sun Microsystems servers are used for large
databases. The main production box is an Ultra E4500 12-CPU server with 6 GB of RAM and
data storage on two Sun T-3 partner pairs—around 240 GB of data storage in the present server
configuration. The main production database includes roughly 50 GB of table space, or about 16
GB exported. Two additional Sun A1000 RAID 5 arrays are connected for replication and
Oracle logs. Sun E450 platforms are used as test, development, and backup servers.
Compaq servers, typically the Compaq 6500, are employed for many smaller tasks, using
Compaq arrays for storage. The current environment also includes a mix of Microsoft Windows
NT 4.0 and Microsoft 2000 servers. Windows platforms include one server with four instances,
one with two instances, one test server with six instances, and one plot server with eight
instances. A Compaq 850R is included as a domain controller and a Compaq 6500 as a Web
server/support desk database engine.
The current Windows Terminal Server environment consists of four Compaq 6500 servers
arranged in one Citrix MetaFrame farm. A second instance is supported on a single server to
support some legacy SDE 3.0 data that has already been converted to ArcGIS 8.1. Windows
Terminal Servers are configured with four 500-MHz Xeon processors and 3 GB of memory,
along with mirrored root disks with no other storage. A total of 90 Citrix client licenses support
the production environment. The test environment consists of one Compaq M370 server. The
test server has two build outs—one to mimic the production environment and one with Windows
2000 server and Citrix XP.
