I just got Image Server up and running and the first thing I did was dump in 500GB of tiled TIFFs. Since I used the software in the early betas, I was excited to see the New Service Wizard. This greatly streamlines the creation of an image service, and I quickly whipped through it and hit "Finish".
While I did
see the "Generate overviews" check box, and I conceptually understood that this would create a set of reduced resolution images for use at larger scales, the impact of this decision is not exactly obvious.
At this point, it's been chugging for 8 hours, and created 845 overview files, and I'm thinking it's nearing completion, but it's hard to tell. I have no doubt that once it's all done, the image service will be screaming fast, but it would be good to have some indication as to how long this process might take. The other option is to uncheck the "Generate Overviews" option, and just create them manually. In that case, you could get the imagery staged up very rapidly, and simply put scale dependancies in your map so that you don't turn the imagery on until you are very zoomed in.
Anyhow - just thought I'd post this so others know what they may be getting into if they check this box.