Multiple indexes (sharding)

Current version: 9.3

Index sharding is a process that splits the documents in an index into smaller partitions. These smaller partitions are called shards. The result is that instead of all documents being in one large index, documents are distributed between shards. The sharding process has logic (the "sharding strategy") that decides how the documents are allocated to the shards.

One index satisfies the needs of most Sitecore solutions but multiple indexes offer better scaling when needed.

Sharding and Solr

When you use Solr, Sitecore does not handle the sharding. Instead, the SolrCloud feature of the Solr application handles the sharding.

Solr can automatically assign documents to shards and it has extra features, such as replicated shards. Replicated shards are useful for handling failure and failover scenarios.

The Sitecore implementation of Solr handles a sharded endpoint in the same way it handles an unsharded endpoint. You do not need any extra configuration to work with Solr sharded indexes.

Note

Sitecore does not fully support failover. Specifically, Sitecore (as a Solr client) cannot switch between Solr servers (Solr replicas) if the current server (leader) goes down.

For more information about the configuration of the SolrCloud, go to https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/solr/SolrCloud

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