Aug. 26, 2020

Tom Humbarger

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3 min. read

We are pleased to announce that we have added Sitecore 10 support for our Sitecore Solr Plugin. The Sitecore Solr Plugin accelerates the process and automates a number of manual tasks involved with connecting a Sitecore installation to a SearchStax Solr instance. Setting up Solr with the Plugin takes just a few minutes and will save you hours of time and effort.

As a Sitecore Technology Alliance Program partner, we know how important it is to stay in step with and support the new Sitecore 10 release. We continue to empower and support the Sitecore community by making Solr easier to install and manage on the Sitecore platform

New Features in Sitecore 10

Accelerating the Solr setup process dovetails with changes that Sitecore made in Version 10 to help developers easily create new Sitecore environments and onboard projects faster.

In addition, some of the other new features of Sitecore XP 10 include:

  • Sitecore Containers – Containers support rapid infrastructure-as-code deployments and onboarding using Docker and Kubernetes technologies
  • Enhanced Audience Segmentation – Sitecore XP 10 expands the platform’s analytics functionality and offers deepers insights on audience engagement and segmentation
  • Expanded XP Content Hub Integration – Sitecore XP 10 provides support for additional field types and lets teams centralize more of their content creation

While Sitecore 10 supports two different search engines: Solr and Azure Search, support for Azure Search is deprecated in Sitecore XP 10.0.0 and will be completely removed in a later release. If you are not using Solr search currently, now is a great time to plan your migration and upgrade plan.

Sitecore Solr Plugin Automates Manual Tasks

Here is what the Sitecore Solr Plugin automates:

  • Checks the connectivity between Sitecore and Solr running on SearchStax
  • Uploads config files to the Solr deployment
  • Determines if the Solr is running on a single node, or if it’s a multi-node cluster.
  • Creates appropriate collections in Solr
  • Configures collections for redundancy and high-availability if it detects Solr is running as a cluster
  • Creates aliases for XDB collections
  • Updates the config files in Sitecore to make sure it is able to communicate with the Solr

Configure the Sitecore Solr Plugin

Configuring and executing the SearchStax Sitecore Plugin is as easy as filling out a simple form that updates the config file and then hitting the return key. Complete integration and configuration details are listed in our Sitecore 10.0 product documentation.

To run the script, you need to update the information in the configuration file which contains the following fields:

Config File for SearchStax Cloud Connector for Sitecore

Sitecore Solr Plugin Versions and Limitations

The Sitecore Solr Plugin v1.7 currently supports the following versions of Sitecore:

 

Sitecore VersionSitecore XPSitecore XConnectSitecore Commerce
9.0 Update-2
9.1 Update-1
9.2 Initial Update
9.3 Initial Update
10.0 Initial Update 

 

The Plugin does not currently support Sitecore XC 10, but support is planned in the near future. There are two limitations for the Sitecore Solr Plugin as it does not support Sitecore SXA or SwitchOnRebuild for Sitecore XP.

Download the Sitecore Solr Plugin v1.7

The Sitecore Solr Plugin v1.7 is an open source solution and is publicly available for free download on GitHub. Full instructions for using the Plugin are included on the GitHub site and the latest Plugin is backwards compatible with earlier versions of Sitecore.

In the FAQ section on GitHub, we also added a new section on recommended Sitecore Solr performance optimization settings. These tuning settings will improve overall performance and cure some common issues from high memory consumption, slow response times and backup issues.

With the support of the Sitecore and Github community, we will continue to update and add new features to the Sitecore Solr Plugin in the future. Please join in the discussion and let us know what updates you’d like to see in the future versions.

By Tom Humbarger

Senior Marketing Programs Manager

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

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