Index Server Cloud

The Index Server cloud provides indexing, content indexing, and search functionality to a variety of Commvault products and features. The Index Server cloud is a deployment of the Index Server that provides fault tolerance and high availability of the Index Server data by distributing the data and search requests across multiple servers.

Key Features

The Index Server cloud provides a scalable solution for features that use an Index Server for content indexing and search operations. The key features of Index Server cloud are as follows:

High Availability with Index Server Cloud Replication

Index Server cloud replication provides high availability for your data for the features that use Index Server cloud. To support fault tolerance, multiple Index Store clients are associated with a single Index Server application. When replication is configured, the data in the index is distributed across three or more nodes in the Index Server cloud. With adequate replication, the Index Server cloud can continue to function even if one or more nodes in the Index Server cloud are unavailable.

Replication Factor

The replication factor is the number of times your data is copied, or replicated, to a different node in your index Server cloud. The number of nodes in your Index Server cloud determine the maximum replication factor for that Index Server cloud. The larger the replication factor, the more durable your system can be.

For example, if you have five nodes in your Index Server cloud and a replication factor of three, the Index Server cloud can handle requests even if up to two nodes are unavailable at one time. With a larger replication factor, your system becomes more reliable. For the same example of an Index Server cloud with five nodes, if you set the replication factor to five, then your Index Server cloud could still function if up to four nodes are unavailable at one time.

While a higher replication factor means a more durable system, higher replication factors mean that more data and objects are consumed by each node in the Index Server cloud. Therefore, you must determine the replication factor for your Index Server cloud based on your need for high availability and your hardware limitations.

Scaling Horizontally with Index Server Cloud

Indexing engines limit the number of objects that you can index or content index on a single node. If you need to index more objects than the maximum for a single Index Server, you can add multiple nodes to a Index Server cloud and distribute the data across as many physical servers as you need. Horizontal scalability overcomes the inherent limitations with the number of objects that you can index in a single node.

Note

Adding more nodes to an Index Server cloud after you create the Index Server cloud is not currently supported. Therefore, before you deploy Index Server cloud you must determine the number of nodes required to handle the expected number of documents for your application. For more information about the number of objects a single node can accommodate for a particular application, such as indexing metadata only or content indexing file data, see the topics in the Search and Analytics: System and Hardware Requirements section.

Components

The Index Server cloud uses the following components:

High Availability Computing (HAC) Cluster

The HAC cluster is a group of High Availability Computing nodes. High Availability Computing nodes are clients where the High Availability Computing package is installed. The High Availability Computing nodes coordinate the operations of individual Index Server nodes in an Index Server cloud.
Index Store Pool

The Index Store Pool is a group of clients that have the Index Store package installed. The clients in the Index Store Pool are the physical locations where content indexing and search operations are performed, as well as where data for Index Server clouds is stored.
Index Server Cloud

The Index Server Cloud is a logical CommCell entity used to configure a group of clients from an Index Store Pool for one or more Commvault features. Index Server clouds also have feature-specific schemas, or roles, that you can add to support content indexing and search functionality for specific Commvault features.