Scaling and configuring search

Version: 9.0

When you configure servers, you must select and configure a search and indexing provider. You can select Solr, Lucene, or Azure, depending on your business purpose and the type of server architecture you want to implement.

Note

You can use Lucene only for a development or single server evaluation environment that runs Sitecore Experience Manager. You cannot use Lucene in a scaled environment. You can only use Lucene for Content Search. xConnect does not support Lucene. We do not recommend or support Lucene in a production environment.

Search frameworks

The Sitecore Experience Platform has three search frameworks:

  • Content Search, which is used by various components primarily to search and index Sitecore items.

    Sitecore provides you with several options for configuring search results and indexing for content search.

  • xConnect Search, which is used to search and index experience data.

  • Commerce Search, which is used to search and index customers and orders.

The following table summarizes the differences between the three search frameworks:

Content Search

xConnect Search

Commerce Search

API

Sitecore Content Search API

xConnect Client API

Commerce Search Service

Providers

  • Solr

  • Azure Search

  • Lucene (not recommended)

  • SolrCloud

  • Solr

  • Azure Search

  • SolrCloud

  • Solr

  • SolrCloud

  • Azure Search

Note

SolrCloud is supported in Sitecore XC version 9.0.3 and later.

Indexes

  • sitecore_core_index

  • sitecore_master_index

  • sitecore_web_index

  • sitecore_marketingdefinitions_master

  • sitecore_marketingdefinitions_web

  • sitecore_marketing_asset_index_master

  • sitecore_marketing_asset_index_web

  • sitecore_testing_index

  • sitecore_suggested_test_index

  • sitecore_fxm_master_index

  • sitecore_fxm_web_index

  • social_messages_master

  • social_messages_web

  • xdb

  • xdb_rebuild

  • Customer Scope index

  • Order Scope index

  • Catalog Items Scope index

Indexer

indexCrawler (run on the core Sitecore application)

xConnect Search Indexer (run as Windows Service or Web Job)

Commerce Minions

Many components that use the Content Search have their own API layer on top of the Content Search API. For example, the Marketing Operations API has a method for searching the sitecore_marketing_* and sitecore_marketingdefinitions_* indexes that references the Content Search API further down the stack.

Note

In Sitecore 9.0 and later, Sitecore Content Search no longer manages sitecore_list_index and sitecore_analytics_index . The xDB collection index replaces both of these indexes.

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