WMS services based on image services may fail to draw after restarting the machine

Description

After restarting the server machine, unexpected behavior may occur when connecting to WMS services based on image services.

Cause

When publishing an image service, capabilities files containing the WMS service end point URL and layer names are generated. Client applications use these capabilities files to correctly retrieve a map.

Portions of the end point URLs could change after restarting the server machine. For example, the IP address of the server machine might change before the restart is complete.

If this change occurs, the end point URLs in the capabilities files are no longer valid and the WMS service fails to draw.

When a machine hosting the ArcGIS Server Object Manager restarts, the capabilities files should automatically be deleted and re-created. The problem is encountered because ArcGIS Server is sometimes not re-creating the capabilities files for image services when the machine restarts.

Note:
This problem does not occur if an image service is restarted manually. This problem does not apply to map services.

Workaround

1. Check the time stamp of system generated capabilities files after restart. By default, these capabilities files are created in a sub-folder of the ArcGIS Server output directory. For example:
   
   C:\arcgisserver\arcgisoutput\MyImageService_ImageServer\wms
   
   The capabilities files should be the following:
   
   GetCapabilities100.xml
   GetCapabilities110.xml
   GetCapabilities111.xml
   GetCapabilities130.xml
2. If the time stamp for the XML files is older at the time when the machine was restarted, manually restart the image service that the WMS service is based upon using ArcCatalog or ArcGIS Server Manager.
3. After the image service is restarted, check to make sure the system generated capabilities files are re-created.