Cluster: Search

Phorge Administrator and User Documentation (Cluster Configuration)

Overview

You can configure Phorge to connect to one or more fulltext search services.

By default, Phorge will use MySQL for fulltext search. This is suitable for most installs. However, alternate engines are supported.

Configuring Search Services

To configure search services, adjust the cluster.search configuration option. This option contains a list of one or more fulltext search services, like this:

[
  {
    "type": "...",
    "hosts": [
      ...
    ],
    "roles": {
      "read": true,
      "write": true
    }
  }
]

When a user makes a change to a document, Phorge writes the updated document into every configured, writable fulltext service.

When a user issues a query, Phorge tries configured, readable services in order until it is able to execute the query successfully.

These options are supported by all service types:

Some service types support additional options.

Available Service Types

These service types are supported:

Fulltext Service Roles

These roles are supported:

Specifying Hosts

The hosts key should contain a list of dictionaries, each specifying the details of a host. A service should normally have one or more hosts.

When an option is set at the service level, it serves as a default for all hosts. It may be overridden by changing the value for a particular host.

Service Type: MySQL

The mysql service type does not require any configuration, and does not need to have hosts specified. This service uses the builtin database to index and search documents.

A typical mysql service configuration looks like this:

{
  "type": "mysql"
}

Service Type: Elasticsearch

The elasticsearch service type supports these options:

A typical elasticsearch service configuration looks like this:

{
  "type": "elasticsearch",
  "hosts": [
    {
      "protocol": "http",
      "host": "127.0.0.1",
      "port": 9200
    }
  ]
}

Monitoring Search Services

You can monitor fulltext search in Config → Search Servers. This interface shows you a quick overview of services and their health.

The table on this page shows some basic stats for each configured service, followed by the configuration and current status of each host.

Rebuilding Indexes

After adding new search services, you will need to rebuild document indexes on them. To do this, first initialize the services:

phorge/ $ ./bin/search init

This will perform index setup steps and other one-time configuration.

To populate documents in all indexes, run this command:

phorge/ $ ./bin/search index --force --background --type all

This initiates an exhaustive rebuild of the document indexes. To get a more detailed list of indexing options available, run:

phorge/ $ ./bin/search help index

Advanced Example

This is a more advanced example which shows a configuration with multiple different services in different roles. In this example:

• Phorge is using an Elasticsearch 2 service as its primary fulltext service.
• An Elasticsearch 5 service is online, but only receiving writes.
• The MySQL service is serving as a backup if Elasticsearch fails.

This particular configuration may not be very useful. It is primarily intended to show how to configure many different options.

[
  {
    "type": "elasticsearch",
    "version": 2,
    "hosts": [
      {
        "host": "elastic2.mycompany.com",
        "port": 9200,
        "protocol": "http"
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "type": "elasticsearch",
    "version": 5,
    "hosts": [
      {
        "host": "elastic5.mycompany.com",
        "port": 9789,
        "protocol": "https"
        "roles": {
          "read": false,
          "write": true
        }
      }
    ]
  },
  {
    "type": "mysql"
  }
]