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Index, Query, Search servers, where are they?

Asked By: Harshit Guha Date: Mar 05, 2010 Category: MOSS Views: 321

I've been studying MOSS 2007 for a while and I never see a clear explanation
about the Index, Query and Search servers. By explanation, I mean, I never see
clear information that explains where they are in a farm, if they belong to all
to the same server, or not.

Let's suppose we have large server farm, with:

- 2 NLB Web Front Ends
- 2 Application Servers, one with Excel Services and the other with Forms
Services
- 2 clustered SQL Server servers

In this scenario, by default, where are the Index server, the Query server, and
the Search server located? What's more, where is the Crawler and where is the
Indexer located?

I asked by default, but are all those servers possible to be configured to be
where we want? How does it chance according to the farm level we have?

If you can either reply here to point out external links that explain such
things, I'll be thankful!

Tagged:index query search servers where are they

5 Answers Found

Answer #1 Answered By: Marianne Vance Answered On: Mar 05, 2010

You can only have one index (crawling) server per shared services
provider. You can combine index and query functions on the same
server, but then you can't have any more query servers. Or you can
have an index server and one or more separate query servers.

In your farm, you could combine index and query functions onto one
application server (either the Excel or Forms Services server). The
issues from this are that one server carries all the processing
load, and there is no redundancy if it fails.

Or you could split index and query functions between the application
servers. This shares the load, but you still have no redundancy.

Or you could put the index function onto one of the app servers, and
make both of the web front ends act as query servers. This gives you
redundancy.

The index server updates the index when it crawls, then copies the
update to any query servers. If the index server fails, the index no
longer gets updated but if you have a separate query server then
search queries keep working (the query servers use their own copy of
the index).

Answer #2 Answered By: Aayushman Kanvinde Answered On: Mar 05, 2010

Undoubtedly, all the info you gave was so much valuable and I could
learn from them, but I still have some questions... still about this
thread.

Is there any difference between Index Server and Search Server? All
the time, we talked about Index and not Search Server, it's a matter
of names usage...

Moreover, where is the Crawler and the Indexer located? Are they the
same thing? Are they on the Index Server, Search Server, or Query
Server?

I'm asking this because I alwais find it confusing lots of different
names being used, sometimes, looking indistinctively.

Answer #3 Answered By: Edgardo Atkins Answered On: Mar 05, 2010

Search is the entire functionality set, Index and Query are the two roles
within Search which can be assigned to different servers in the farm, the
Crawler is one piece of the Indexing role.

Answer #4 Answered By: Kamal Mayachari Answered On: Mar 05, 2010

And the Gatherer, is it any piece of something too? On which serves does it
stay?

What's more, could anybody, if possible, outline links on the web describing the
WSS and MOSS Search architecture?

Answer #5 Answered By: Kelsie Terrell Answered On: Mar 05, 2010

Gatherer is (like the Crawler) part of the Index role.

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