View or change content index locations (Search Server 2008)

Applies To: Microsoft Search Server 2008

Topic Last Modified: 2009-06-02

This article provides information about viewing or changing the location of the content index for an index server or a query server.

About content index locations

As Search Server 2008 crawls content, it creates or updates a content index. The content index stores text from crawled documents.

In a deployment that contains one or more query servers that are separate from the index server, Search Server continually propagates the content index from the index server to each query server. Thus, the content index is on the index server and a copy of the content index is on each separate query server. (This enables each query server to serve queries from its copy of the content index.)

When you deploy the index server or add a query server, you establish the location, or path, of the content index for that server. The content index location can be different for each index and query server, and you can change the location for any index server or query server later according to your needs. For example, you might want to make such a change if the current location has limited disk space, or if you want to move the index to a storage area network (SAN). The default location for the content index on an index server or a query server is: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Data\Office Server\Applications

In this article:

• How you establish the content index location for the index server during deployment

• How you establish the content index location for a query server during deployment

• Viewing or changing the content index location for index and query servers

How you establish the content index location for the index server during deployment

The first computer that you deploy for a Search Server farm is automatically configured as the index server for the deployment. During the installation, you establish the location of the content index on the index server. The location is established differently depending on whether you install Search Server by using the Basic installation option or the Advanced installation option:

• Basic installation option

  During a Basic installation, the content index location is set to the default path. There is no option to specify a different path.

• Advanced installation option

  During an Advanced installation on the first computer in a deployment, you can specify the content index location in either of the following places:

  • On the Server Type page, on the File Location tab.

  • On the Search Server Configuration page, in the Optional section, in the Content index location section.

For more information, see Install Search Server 2008 or Search Server 2008 Express.

How you establish the content index location for a query server during deployment

When you add a query server to an existing Search Server deployment, you establish the content index location for that server. This is the location to which the content index continually propagates from the index server. During installation, on the Server Type page, on the File Location tab, you can accept the default path for the content index or you can specify a different path.

Viewing or changing the content index location for index and query servers

After you deploy the index server or a query server, you can perform any of the following procedures at any time:

• View the content index location for the index server (Search Server 2008)

• Change the content index location for the index server (Search Server 2008)

• View the content index location for a query server (Search Server 2008)

• Change the content index location for a query server (Search Server 2008)

See Also

Concepts

Plan to deploy Search Server 2008 or Search Server 2008 Express
Add query servers to expand a farm (Search Server 2008)