Add or remove a crawl component (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint)

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Applies to: FAST Search Server 2010

Crawl components process crawls of content sources, add information about the location and crawl schedule of content sources to their associated crawl databases, and pass the crawled item to the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint farm. Crawl components are associated with a single FAST Search Content Search Service Application. You can distribute the crawl load by adding crawl components to different farm servers.

You assign a farm server to participate in crawling by creating a crawl component on that server. If you want to balance the load of servicing crawls across multiple farm servers, add crawl components to the farm and associate them with the servers you want to crawl content.

Warning

Before you add or remove a crawl component, we strongly recommend that you confirm that all content sources are idle. To check whether all content sources are idle, you can go to the FAST_Search_Content_Search_service_application_name:Manage Content Sources page and check the value in the Status field for each content source. A value of Idle in the Status field for a content source indicates that no crawl is in progress.
If one or more content sources are not idle before you add or remove a crawl component, tables in the crawl database can become inconsistent. In this case, active crawls will not resume or stop, which will make it necessary to reset the search index and recrawl all content.
To ensure that all content sources are idle, you can wait until all crawls complete normally, or you can manually stop each crawl that is in progress. For information about how to stop a crawl, see Start, pause, resume, or stop a crawl (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint).

To add a crawl component to the FAST Search Content Search Service Application

  1. On the Home page of the SharePoint Central Administration, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.

  2. On the Manage Service Applications page, click the name of the FAST Search Content SSA to which you want to add a crawl component.

  3. On the Search Administration page, in the Search Application Topology section, click the Modify button.

  4. On the Manage Search Topology page, click New, and then click Crawl Component.

  5. In the Add Crawl Component dialog box, in the Server list, click the farm server to which you want to add the crawl component.

  6. In the Associated Crawl Database list, click the crawl database you want to associate with the new crawl component.

  7. The Temporary Location of Index field is not applicable to FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, and can be left unchanged.

  8. Click OK to add the new crawl component to the job queue.

  9. On the Manage Search Topology page, click the Apply Topology Changes button to start the SharePoint timer job that will add the new crawl component to the farm on the specified server.

    Note

    You can make other changes to the Search topology and then apply them all at the same time by clicking the Apply Topology Changes button.

Configure SSL enabled communication on each of the servers that hosts a crawl component

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) communication is required for feeding from SharePoint Server 2010 (through the FAST Search Content SSA) to FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. To enable secure communications, you must configure each server that hosts a crawl component to use an SSL certificate for FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. You can use the default FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint self-signed certificate that is generated during post-setup configuration. However, in a production environment we highly recommend that you use a certificate that is issued by a certification authority (CA). See Manage certificates (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint) for more information.

Use the same certificate type (self-signed or signed by a CA) on the additional host(s) for crawl components as you used to enable SSL communication for the original FAST Search Content SSA.

To configure SSL communication using the self-signed certificate created by the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint post-setup configuration procedure

  1. Import the FASTSearchCert.pfx certificate in the certificate store under Certificates(Local Computer)\Personal.

  2. Grant the Search Service Application account (the account under which the SharePoint Server Search 14 (OSearch14) service runs) access to the private key of the imported certificate.

To configure SSL communication using a certificate signed by a certification authority

  1. Make sure that the server has a certificate installed that is issued and signed by the same Certificate Authority as the certificate on the host server of the FAST Search Content SSA. The certificate must be installed under Certificates(Local Computer)\Personal in the certificate store. The root CA signed certificate must be installed under Certificates(Local Computer)\Trusted Root Certification Authorities.

  2. Grant the Search Service Application account (the account under which the SharePoint Server Search 14 service (OSearch14) runs) access to the private key of the imported certificate.

To remove a crawl component from the FAST Search Content Search Service Application

  1. On the Home page of the SharePoint Central Administration, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.

  2. On the Manage Service Applications page, click the name of the FAST Search Content SSA from which you want to remove a crawl component.

  3. On the Search Administration page, in the Search Application Topology section, click the Modify button.

  4. On the Manage Search Topology page, click the crawl component you want to remove, and then click Delete.

  5. In the message box that appears, click OK to add the removal of the crawl component to the job queue.

  6. On the Manage Search Topology page, click the Apply Topology Changes button to start the SharePoint timer job that will delete the crawl component from the farm.

    Note

    You can make other changes to the Search topology and then apply them all at the same time by clicking the Apply Topology Changes button.

See Also

Concepts

Create and set up the Content Search Service Application (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint)