SearchStax Help Center

SearchStax Managed Search service customers sometimes encounter issues when connecting Sitecore to Solr Cloud for the first time. The issues are so common that a developer can encounter them in sequence (fix one, meet the next one). On this page we present solutions to a range of these Sitecore start-up issues.

Note that SearchStax supplies explicit instructions for bridging this gap, including the SearchStax Managed Search Connector for Sitecore that performs the configuration for you.

Sitecore can’t connect to Solr:

• IP Filtering. First, be sure that the computer running Sitecore has been whitelisted in the IP filters of the Solr deployment. Note that DHCP can change a server’s IP address without warning. If the connection used to work but then stopped working, suspect this source.
  
  
• Incorrect Sitecore connection string. To connect Sitecore to a Solr cloud cluster, check the SitecoreWebSite/App_Config/ConnectionStrings.config file for an entry similar to:
  
  <add name="solr.search" connectionString="<Solr HTTP Endpoint>/solr;solrCloud=true" />
  
  Solr is unforgiving about this string. An extra / at the end will break it. (In that case, you may see an error mentioning Test connection has failed with an exception. Type: 'SolrConnectionException'.)
  
  The connectionString ends with /solr;solrCloud=true. There is no / between /solr and the semicolon. Sitecore inserts that character automatically.
  
  If you connect to Solr from a browser, which is a good debugging aid, you must include the / prior to the semicolon, as in /solr/;solrCloud=true.
  
  The solrCloud=true parameter is highly recommended for single-node Solr deployments, and is required for Solr clusters.
  
  
• Incorrect xConnect connection string. When using xConnect to index Sitecore xDB databases, for every instance of the xConnect Collection Search role, open the <role-root>/App_Config/ConnectionStrings.config file and set:
  
  <add name="solrCore" connectionString="<Solr HTTP Endpoint>/solr/xdb;solrcloud=true" />
  
  The connectionString ends with /solr/xdb;solrCloud=true. There is no / between /solr/xdb and the semicolon.
  
  
• Sitecore mentions 10.x.x.x:8983. You tried to build an index from the Sitecore Index Manager. The system seemed to hang or took a very long time to complete indexing. There was an error saying “Unable to connect to Solr” and mentioning an internal IP address (10.x.x.x) and port 8983. Alternately, you may have seen a Sitecore message saying “ERROR GetSummary has failed due to an exception.”
  
  This is a known bug in Sitecore. To get around it:
  • Generate the index from the Sitecore Content Editor instead of the Index Manager.
  • Contact Sitecore for a patch file. This bug is being tracked by Sitecore under the reference number – 355209.

  This situation sometimes arises due to a misconfiguration of the Sitecore 10/Solr connection. See Walkthrough: Setting up SolrCloud, section Configure Sitecore to use SolrCloud, step 3:
  
  

  If you only access nodes of SolrCloud within a private network, set the ContentSearch.IndexingManager.DisplayShortStatistic setting to true. This eliminates direct requests to the nodes used to display additional index statistics in the Indexing Manager Wizard.
  
  

• Solr Basic Auth password contains special characters: The Sitecore connection string to Solr often contains the Solr Basic Auth username and password:
  
  https://username:pass%word@<Solr Endpoint>;solrCloud=true
  
  There are special characters that cannot be passed in an HTTP URL. If the password contains % signs, for instance, you will get an error saying “Not a valid Solr URL.” Substitute %25 for % in the URL string, so the above password becomes “pass%25word”.
  
  Or, just use a password without special characters.

Solr.log file contains schema or field errors:

• See our Help Center page on What causes Indexing Errors? for more information.

Questions?

Do not hesitate to contact the SearchStax Support Desk.