When you publish a service using ArcGIS for Desktop, both a draft service definition file and a service definition file are created and temporarily stored in a staging folder locally on disk. The default staging location is a temporary folder in your Windows user profile. For example, on Windows 7, this location is C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\ESRI\Desktop10.1\Staging. The staging directory contains separate folders for each server connection. If you have saved a draft service definition using a specific connection to a GIS server, you will find the service definition or draft under the server connection folder.
The Windows file system has limits to the number of characters that a path can accommodate. ArcGIS warns you when the combination of the path to the staging folder and the server connection exceeds the size supported by the operating system. The same is true for the input directories on the ArcGIS server. If the directory structure for service resources on the server exceeds operating system limits, the service cannot publish successfully.
If your staging / server connection path exceeds the operating system path limit, you can do the following to reduce the number of characters used for this path.
- You can change the location of the staging folder to a location
closer to the root directory, C:\temp, for example.
Learn more about changing the default service definition staging folder in ArcGIS for Desktop
- You can change the server connection name so that it uses fewer characters. To rename the service connection, right-click the service connection in the Catalog window, and choose Rename from the menu.
Learn more about connecting to ArcGIS for Server in ArcGIS for Desktop
- Shorten the service name.