If you are running multiple installations of QuickFinder Server across several servers, you can simplify management tasks, such as re-generating indexes and sharing configuration settings, by configuring all of your servers into a single QuickFinder Synchronization cluster.
QuickFinder Synchronization lets you designate one QuickFinder server as the search master from which updated indexes, templates, and configuration settings are systematically sent out to all other QuickFinder servers defined as part of a QuickFinder Synchronization cluster. Each of the other servers must be configured to receive updates from the search master.
QuickFinder Synchronization offers several key benefits:
Saves system resources on all other machines because they do not need to regenerate indexes themselves.
Lets an administrator manage all other QuickFinder servers from a single interface.
Regenerates indexes nightly on the search master and then pushes them out to all other QuickFinder servers.
Offers fault tolerance and load-balancing benefits by hosting QuickFinder indexes, templates, and configuration settings across multiple servers; if one server goes down, your users do not know the difference.
You might want to use a Novell iChain server to front the QuickFinder Synchronization cluster servers. This offers basic load-balancing capabilities using revolving IP addresses. For more information, see the Novell iChain 2.3 Administration Guide.
Ensures that all QuickFinder servers within a cluster are using the same version of an index. This means that you never have a server with a newer version of an index than all other servers. Even the search master won’t use the newly generated indexes unless all of the servers in the cluster can also do so.
IMPORTANT:QuickFinder Server Synchronization is different from Cluster Services. Novell Cluster Services groups two or more OES 11 SP3 servers together for the sake of failover and to ensure server availability. A QuickFinder Synchronization cluster synchronizes indexes, templates, and configuration settings between two or more QuickFinder servers, thus reducing the administrative work of updating the same index across several QuickFinder servers. (See Section 6.0, Configuring QuickFinder Server for Novell Cluster Services.)
To enable QuickFinder Synchronization, you need to do the following:
Configure each QuickFinder server and virtual search servers that you want included in the cluster to receive updates. See Section 9.1, Setting Up a Search Server to Receive Updates.
Designate one of the QuickFinder servers as the search master and configure it to send updates to other QuickFinder servers by identifying each of the other servers to be included in the cluster. A search master can continue to serve as a QuickFinder server, and you can have more than one search master in your QuickFinder Synchronization cluster. See Section 9.2, Setting Up a Search Master and Defining a Cluster.
Configure which indexes on the search master are included in the synchronized cluster. See Section 9.3, Updating a Virtual Search Server
Although the order in which you perform these tasks is not critical, we recommend that you set up the Search servers intended to receive cluster data first, and then configure a QuickFinder server as the search master and use it to define the synchronization cluster.