[mapserver-users] Advice for a new server for a huge data set.

[thatsanicehatyouhave at mac.com]

Hello,

I have recently discovered MapServer and I wanted to get some advice about setting up a new WMS. I have a data set that is several terabytes in size that I'd like to serve.

As just a trial, I want to start with a single raster layer. Is there an example of a MapServer setup that I can look at that only serves raster images in the form of individual tiles? The raster examples I have seen use a single image that MS apparently slices up on demand, but no such single image for my data exists (it's far too big).

What is the recommended approach? I could write a script that can generate the images on demand from the raw data - can these be passed to mapserv? I can also pre-generate tiles of the whole data set. If I want to implement a zoom, presumably I'd generate multiple sets of these at different scales? Would each zoom level be a new layer?

I'm sure I'll have lots more questions, but this should start me on the right path!

Cheers,
Demitri