Configuration options for accessing catalog index files

You can configure catalog index builds in one of the following two ways, depending on your business requirements:

• Build the index on a shared, central disk that is accessible from all servers.
• Advantages:
  • Centralized control of shared index
  • No file transfer issues because the index is not copied across multiple servers
• Limitation: :
  • Shared disk could become a single point of failure (if no redundancy is involved)
  • Volume of reads and writes from shared disk might slow performance, depending on the setup

• Build and push a copy of the index to multiple servers via file transfer. Automate this file transfer process to occur on completion of an index build, but do not automatically activate the index. When all servers have acknowledged the completion of the file transfer, call the manageSearchIndexTrigger API to activate the index.
• Advantage:
  • No central point of failure
• Limitation: :
  • Possible overhead to building and pushing index files across servers

If you choose this method of building the index in one location and reading it from another, refer to the Configuring Property Files topic for information about enabling different properties for individual processes. For more information about building and searching catalog indexes, see the Catalog Management Concepts topic.