Is there possibility to use Solr in Sitecore PaaS?

Question

Clients wants to go full PaaS with Sitecore 9 and Sitecore Experience Commerce 9.

We have existing solution which was built with Sitecore 8.2 and Sitecore Commerce 8.2.1 with Solrand it's deployed as IaaS on Azure. We would like to continue using Solr as Search Provider instead of Azure Search also in upgraded solution.

I saw there is possibility to create VM in Azure and install Solr there but I want to have Solr just somewhere as a service and specify connection string at the end.

Is there possibility to use Solr as SaaS in Azure or other cloud platform?

I saw there is https://www.searchstax.com/. Can you recommend this or something similar?

Answer 1

While Sitecore do not offer that option as in the ARM templates out of the box, there is nothing to stop you from using Solr in your PaaS setup. From my experience you have the 2 options mentioned in your question:

1. Setup VM's and run SolrCloud there. The cons there is that you still have to maintain the VMs and you are effectively in an IaaS/PaaS hybrid setup.
2. Use a service like SearchStax to have Solr as a Service. They have a SeartStax Private Cloud option that runs Solr in an Azure virtual private network on Azure. This would sit in the same network as your Sitecore PaaS environment and effectively provide a PaaS Solr solution, its similar to how MongoDB was setup in 8.2

So while its not out of the box, it is definitely possible.

Answer 2

For now Sitecore or other Sitecore partners doesn't offer an OFFICIAL and tested option for Azure. In the future releases you will have the option to use Solr cloud provided by Sitecore or by a partner, Arm templates will contain scripts for Solr Cloud.