Set SOLR master/slave model for Sitecore

Question

I am using the SOLR master-slave model in my Sitecore solution. While setting up the SOLR master-slave data replication, I found, the slave is defined in the solrConfig.Xml file for each core of the SOLR. And the cores are created after installing the Sitecore against each DB.

So, do we need to set up the slave after installing the Sitecore or if not then can any expert guide me to set up the master-slave model in SOLR?

Thanks in advancee.

Answer 1

As far as I’m aware the Solr Slave/Master approach is now deprecated and it is recommended that you use Solr Cloud instead.

In Solr cloud you have 3 Solr servers all linked together in a Cloud with Zookeeper maintaining the connections between them.

I've included quite a lot of information on how we set this up in this SSE post:

Sitecore Content deliveries and Solr with High availability

This is an good blog post with more detail on how to set this up: http://www.chrissulham.com/sitecore-on-solr-cloud-part-2/

Sitecore also have a guide for this now:

https://doc.sitecore.com/developers/90/platform-administration-and-architecture/en/walkthrough--setting-up-solrcloud.html

A 2nd option is using SearchStacks instead to host Solr in the Cloud: https://www.searchstax.com/docs/sitecore-9-solr/

Answer 2

Yes, you need to first install Sitecore and then configure Master/Slave.

Here are the steps to follow -

1. First, you need to install Sitecore with single Solr instance
2. Then you need to create another instance of Solr by copying cores from the first instance because the schema is already populated in the first Solr instance.
3. Configure Master & Slave by updating configuration manually
4. Restart both Solr instances.