Azure Search 1000 field limit issue

Question

I noticed in 9.0.2 and 9.1 there's a new ExcludeFields.config file for the Azure indexes to help keep things below Azure's 1000-field limitation. However, this apparently isn't enough, as we're running into the issue. I saw an SSE post on this - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49940421/sitecore-9-1-azure-master-index-rebuild-gets-stuck - which I assume meant 9.0.1 given the time of the issue. Has anyone run into a better way to handle this, or generally is the best way to exclude all of the custom fields in templates I'm creating and make custom indexes for the specific areas I'm working with?

Answer 1

The problem is that when you are adding fields and have a bunch of languages, this will create a lot of new fields when "indexallfields" is set to true. (Each field multiplied by the number of languages) So you quickly get over 1000 fields. And since the 1000 fields is an azure limitation, there is not much sitecore can do about it.

The best way to handle this is still to set indexallfields to false and to include the fields you need in the master index manually.

With 9.1, there is no need to add the form fields anymore, this has been solved by Sitecore.

<sitecore role:require="Standalone or ContentManagement or ContentDelivery" search:require="Azure">
<contentSearch>
  <indexConfigurations>
    <defaultCloudIndexConfiguration>
      <documentOptions>
        <!-- We only want default fields in the core/master/web indexes on azure due to 1000 field limit  -->
        <indexAllFields>false</indexAllFields>            
      </documentOptions>
    </defaultCloudIndexConfiguration>
  </indexConfigurations>
</contentSearch>
</sitecore>