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Archive Manager 5.9.6 - Administration Guide

Administration menu Authentication modes Data loaders Download tools Federated Search Instances Groups Index management Logins Security roles Storage location Message tags Proxy credentials Alert Service Policies Exclusion rules Mail servers Mailbox assignment Mailboxes Lync servers Lync user assignment Lync users Reports Message policies Message policy assignments Retention policies Tenants System maintenance Log Viewer Exchange Utility Administering in a hosted Exchange environment Appendix A: Moving database or attachment store Appendix B: Enabling generating publisher evidence

Index management

Overview

The Full Text Index is a collection of message and attachment data to facilitate fast and accurate search results based on queries. The Full Text Index is split into individual partitions, each of which indexes a subset of message or attachment data into a separate index directory. The items contained in each partition are defined by the Index Rollover Policy.

Multiple drives can be used to enhance indexing in the following ways:

Redundancy: A secondary or failover partition is used as a backup to a primary partition. The secondary partition is used if there is a problem with the primary partition.
Performance: Performance is enhanced by distributing items in a round robin method across multiple partitions on multiple drives. This method allows multiple partitions and drives to share the load of indexing and searching.

The following terms are used throughout this chapter:

Partition set: A partition set is a group of shards that span a date range. The date range is approximately 180 days per drive. Depending upon how many drives you have configured, your partition set will consist of 1, 2, 3, or 4 shards.
Partition: A group of index files used to facilitate fast and accurate search results based on queries.
Shard: A shard contains a primary partition, and if failover is enabled a shard also contains a secondary (failover) partition. The number of shards is equal to the number of index drives selected, up to 4 drives.
Index: An index is a collection of message or attachment partition sets. The partition set name is based upon the date of the first item indexed in the set. When a new partition set is automatically created, it is defined based upon the Index Rollover Policy.

Index topology

The following graphics show possible index configurations.

The Single Drive Configuration graphic illustrates a possible scenario for configuring an index with a single drive. In this example, an index with one partition has been divided based on date ranges. The default date range for each partition set on a single drive is approximately 6 months (180 days). Each partition set contains a range of items.

The Multiple Drive Configuration graphic illustrates distributing the partition sets from the Single Drive Configuration graphic across three drives. All items are distributed evenly across all partitions in the set to balance the indexing load. In a multiple drive configuration, the number of partition sets is based on a date range. The number of shards in a set is based on the number of drives. In the example above, Set 2 - P2 references partition 2 of set 2, and individual shards are indicated by color. The default date range for this configuration is 540 days, or 180 days for each of the 3 drives.

The Multiple Drive Configuration With Failover graphic illustrates adding failover capabilities which will duplicate index data across multiple drives for fault tolerance. For example, Set 2 - P2 on drive 1 contains items 1 and 4. These items are duplicated in Set 2 - P6 on drive 2. In this example, the shard consists of Set 2 - P2 and Set 2 - P6, where P6 represents the failover partition.

Configuring the Full Text Index

The Full Text Index is installed when you install Archive Manager. During the install, the user is prompted to configure the Full Text Index. The installer prompts the administrator to designate which disks will be used to store partitions. Using multiple hard disks is required for index failover (fault tolerance) and may improve indexing and searching performance. A failover partition that is used as a backup must be located on a different drive than the original data. If one drive fails, the failover partition is used.

It is recommended to select the Default Configuration option on the Full Text Index Setup page. Using this option creates a default rollover policy based on time. The amount of time between rollovers depends upon the number of drives configured during the install, or added from the website. More than one drive results in failover becoming enabled. The rollover policy is used to determine when the current newest partition rolls over and a newly-created partition becomes the current partition. It also defines the configuration of the partitions.

The rollover policy created when selecting this option can be viewed and edited on the Index Rollover Policy page. Backup settings can be customized after the installation has completed.

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