Hfrhyu

I'm trying to move a feature class on our network SDE that's made up of polylines as a CSV file to the local machine (or fileGDB but slow speed seems to be the theme regardless of output format)

import arcpy, csv
import datetime
from arcpy import env

def tableToCSV(input_tbl, csv_filepath):
 fld_list = arcpy.ListFields(input_tbl)
 fld_names = [fld.name for fld in fld_list]
 with open(csv_filepath, 'wb') as csv_file:
 writer = csv.writer(csv_file)
 writer.writerow(fld_names)
 with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(input_tbl, fld_names) as cursor:
 for row in cursor:
 writer.writerow(row)
 print csv_filepath + " CREATED"
 csv_file.close()

env.workspace = r"Q:SDEDirect Connection to delivery.sde"
desiredFC = arcpy.ListFeatureClasses("","","Topography") 


for fc in desiredFC: 
 if fc == 'Contours':
 print 'Starting to Process/' + fc 
 startTime = datetime.datetime.now()
 out_csv = "C:UsersCHOKDesktopExtract Data Method/" + fc[14:] + '.csv'
 tableToCSV(fc, out_csv)
 endTime = datetime.datetime.now()
 print 'Finished Processing/' + fc
 print 'It took ' + str(endTime - startTime) + ' to process ' + fc 

raw_input('Press Enter to exit')

When I run the above script, I see that transferring 3.6 gb of data from the SDE to a CSV (or file geodatabase using arcpy copy methods) takes more than 3~4 hours to run.

I can see in task manager that the network speed utilised is usually between 0.3 Mbps to 2 Mbps but sometimes the speed jumps to 10~20 Mbps and other feature classes are transferred at around 5~7 Mbps.

Is there something I can try to improve the speed at which SDE stored on the network is copied over to a local drive or is this a lost cause due to the network currently in place?

I believe this is happening because you are using cursors for your data fetching operation, I had encountered same behavior in my past. I would suggest you to use plain SQL statements for query. Use this pseudo python code. Once you get result set then you can iterate through result set and save in CSV.

ArcSDESQLExecute.execute(sql_statement)

Now since result set in plain format, you can perform write operation with much faster speed.
.
ArcSDESQLExecute

 import arcpy

 # Use a connection file to create the connection
 db = r'Database ConnectionssDEConnection_pointing_to_your_version.sde'
 egdb_conn = arcpy.ArcSDESQLExecute(db)

 table_name = 'YourFeatureClassName'
 field_name = 'FieldName'

 # don't select the Shape field until its necessary as Shape stored in BLOB field which take time to process.
 sql = '''
 SELECT * FROM 0
 '''.format(table_name)

 egdb_return = egdb_conn.execute(sql)
 for i in egdb_return:
 print(': '.format(*i))