Migrating Azure Search to SearchStax Solr Service for Sitecore

Nov. 23, 2020

Karan Jeet Singh

2 min. read

Migrating Azure Search to SearchStax Solr Service for Sitecore is a fairly easy and straightforward process. In this post, we take a look at reasons to use Solr for Sitecore and provide the Sitecore configuration steps to migrate from Azure Search to the SearchStax Solr service.

Solr or Azure Search for Sitecore

Sitecore’s product documentation includes a page for Using Solr or Azure Search.

The most pressing reason to use Solr for Sitecore installations is that “Azure Search is deprecated in Sitecore XP 10 and will be completely removed in a later release.”

Other reasons to use Solr with Sitecore include:

On-premise installation – Solr is the default search engine for content search and xConnect search for on-premise installations.
Azure search limitations – Azure Search has some limitations compared to Solr that you must evaluate for your implementation.

Steps to Migrate Azure Search to SearchStax Solr Service

After setting up a SearchStax Solr Service environment, follow these seven steps to complete the setup by editing the configuration on the Sitecore end.

Step 1 – Specify the Search Provider

Navigate to Web.config file
Locate the <AppSettings> section and change the value of the search:define setting to Solr

</AppSettings>

Step 2 – Configure the Solr Endpoint

Navigate to App_Config/ConnectionStrings.config
Locate <add> tag with an attribute “solr.search” and change the value of connectionString.

Step 3 – Update the Connection String for xConnect

Navigate to App_Config/ConnectionStrings.config for xConnect
Locate <add> tag with an attribute “solrCore” and change the value of connectionString.
Also, Navigate to App_Data\jobs\continuous\IndexWorker\App_Config\ConnectionStrings.config for xConnect
Locate <add> tag with an attribute “solrCore” and change the value of connectionString.

Step 4 – Provide the schema.json for xConnect to SearchStax

Use the Solr Schema API and upload the schema.json following the steps in the Solr Reference Guide. Premium Support customers can send us the following file App_Data\solrcommands\schema.json for xConnect, and we will upload it to Solr for you.

Step 5 – Restart Sitecore

Step 6 – Populate Schema for XP

Open Sitecore UI, Control Panel > Populate Solr Managed Schema
Select all the indexes and click on Populate.

Step 7 – Build Indexes

Open Sitecore UI, Control Panel > Indexing manager
Select all the indexes and click Rebuild.

At this point, your Sitecore instance will have switched from Azure Search to Solr, the schema for XP will be populated and indexes will be rebuilt.

SearchStax Solr Service for Sitecore

As we demonstrate in this post, it is pretty easy to migrate Azure Search to SearchStax Solr service. If you have any further questions or would like to discuss your Solr implementation, please contact SearchStax Support.

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Migrating Azure Search to SearchStax Solr Service for Sitecore

Solr or Azure Search for Sitecore

Steps to Migrate Azure Search to SearchStax Solr Service

Step 1 – Specify the Search Provider

Step 2 – Configure the Solr Endpoint

Step 3 – Update the Connection String for xConnect

Step 4 – Provide the schema.json for xConnect to SearchStax

Step 5 – Restart Sitecore

Step 6 – Populate Schema for XP

Step 7 – Build Indexes

SearchStax Solr Service for Sitecore

By Karan Jeet Singh

Solutions Engineer

“…search should not only be for those organizations with massive search budgets.”

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