topic Re: Single Solr isntance to track multiple alfresco servers in Alfresco Archive

Single Solr isntance to track multiple alfresco servers

ayubalfresco — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 08:26:46 GMT

Hi,Could some please explain if its possible to track indexes of multiple alfresco servers which are in cluster (shared content store) using a single Solr server ? I have created Alfresco cluster using share contentstore. As best practice I have stored the indexes on inidiviual alfresco servers.Each

Re: Single Solr isntance to track multiple alfresco servers

mrogers — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 10:18:30 GMT

Yes you can. However you will need to consider what happens if the node with the solr server is not available.

Re: Single Solr isntance to track multiple alfresco servers

ayubalfresco — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 12:13:00 GMT

Could you please elaborate (with an example) more on how we can achieve this ?

Since the below properties are hardwired in archive-SpacesStore and workspace-SpacesStore of Solr

data.dir.root=/opt/alfresco/alf_data/solr
data.dir.store=archive/SpacesStore

What would be your suggestion to opt when the Solr node goes down ?

Re: Single Solr isntance to track multiple alfresco servers

ayubalfresco — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 06:02:31 GMT

Any clues please ?

Re: Single Solr isntance to track multiple alfresco servers

fstnboy — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 16:11:47 GMT

Hi ayubalfresco,

Since the Alfresco nodes are clustered the caches are replicated between them. I guess what you can do is put a load balancer in front of the Alfresco nodes and point both of them to the same Solr instance. So when Solr makes a query to track Alfresco it will hit the load balancer and will go to the available node.

When there's an update in the either of the nodes, they will update the Solr indexes.

Now, the problem is that there's a single point of failure with the indexes, if Solr goes down then the search in Alfresco won't work.

This is a problem Alfresco needs to solve and many people is struggling with.

Re: Single Solr isntance to track multiple alfresco servers

mrogers — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 16:22:00 GMT

You also put a load balancer in front of the solr nodes so you can have multiple instances of solr. So if one solr node fails or is shut down then the request is routed to the other.

That's how alfresco cloud is configured.

The extra "trick" used on cloud is that each solr node has a private (not customer facing) instance of alfresco for feeding solr.

Re: Single Solr isntance to track multiple alfresco servers

ayubalfresco — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 18:33:29 GMT

Thank you for the update. Could you please confirm if the indexs will be saved on the solr server right ?

Re: Single Solr isntance to track multiple alfresco servers

parzgnat — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 18:52:59 GMT

Alfresco Enterprise offers an add-on for deploying Solr on a separate server from the Alfresco server itself, so I'm assuming that it's possible in community as well. If your Alfresco servers are clustered, then they can utilize one common solr server, or if there's a need for high-availability, I believe that you can cluster Solr as well. Here is a link with information for installing Solr with Alfresco

http://docs.alfresco.com/4.1/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.alfresco.enterprise.doc%2Fconcepts%2Fsolr-webapp-config.html‍

I hope this helps.

Re: Single Solr isntance to track multiple alfresco servers

mrogers — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 14:54:01 GMT

Indexes are stored wherever you put them!

See solrcore.properties in particular the data.dir.root property.

Re: Single Solr isntance to track multiple alfresco servers

fstnboy — Fri, 11 Oct 2013 13:47:40 GMT

So, if you let's say 2 Solr instances and 2 customer facing Alfresco instances. then you'd have 4 alfresco nodes in the cluster, am I right?

That's helpful, but could be pricey for a client…