Creating a basemap in ArcGIS Desktop
From Wildsong
Working on creating the ESRI basemap.
I had some data stashed already that I can use, a file geodatabase that's a few years old. I built it with ArcGIS 9.3. FGDB has come a long way since then. My first step therefore was to open it in ArcCatalog and use the "Update" button to convert it to 10.1 format... continued in Creating a basemap in ArcGIS Desktop.
I thought I'd have to copy the map and data up to the server.
I used the tools described in the resource pages to do this instead.