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SkyVault Community Edition 201704 » Administering » Managing search services » Configuring search with Solr 4 » Configure Solr search service

Installing and configuring Solr

The Solr 4 search subsystem is installed by default when you install SkyVault Community Edition 5.2 using the setup wizards (installer), and therefore, you do not need to do these steps. If you install manually using the distribution zip, you will need to configure Solr 4 separately on the existing installation using Tomcat.
Note: To confirm which application servers are supported for running the Solr application on, see the Supported Platforms matrix for your version of SkyVault Community Edition.
The installation contains the following artifacts:
  • a template SOLR home directory containing solr.xml, which is expected by Solr
  • Solr WAR file
  • an example context to wire up in Tomcat
  • two Solr core configurations: one to track the live SpacesStore and one to track items archived from the SpacesStore
You can install Solr either to the same Tomcat application server as SkyVault Community Edition or a separate Tomcat. The Solr server indexes data by periodically tracking the changes made to SkyVault Community Edition. It does so by calling a RESTful API that describe the latest transactions to it. The SkyVault Community Edition server performs searches through the Solr server by issuing queries through a special API. For this reason, there needs to be two-way communication between the SkyVault Community Edition server and the Solr server. For security reasons, the communication channel between the SkyVault Community Edition server and Solr server must be secured by means of https encryption and mutual client certificate authentication.

The following instructions use <ALFRESCO_TOMCAT_HOME> to refer to the tomcat directory where SkyVault Community Edition is installed and <SOLR4_TOMCAT_HOME> to the omcat directory where Solr is installed. These can be the same or different directories, depending on whether you have chosen to install Solr on a standalone server.

  1. The <EXTRACTED-ARCHIVE> directory contains a solr4 directory. Copy the solr4 folder to the <ALFRESCO_HOME> directory, for example, <ALFRESCO_HOME>/solr4/. This directory now becomes <SOLR4-ARCHIVE>, which is the Solr base directory.
  2. Copy the <ALFRESCO_HOME>/solr4/context.xml file to <SOLR4_TOMCAT_HOME>\conf\Catalina\localhost\solr4.xml.
  3. Edit solr/home in XML to point to the path for <SOLR4-ARCHIVE>, which is the Solr base directory mentioned in Step 2.

    For example:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Context debug="0" crossContext="true">
  <Environment name="solr/home" type="java.lang.String" value="<SOLR4-ARCHIVE>" override="true"/>
  <Environment name="solr/model/dir" type="java.lang.String" value="@@ALFRESCO_SOLR4_MODEL_DIR@@" override="true"/>
  <Environment name="solr/content/dir" type="java.lang.String" value="@@ALFRESCO_SOLR4_CONTENT_DIR@@" override="true"/>
</Context>
    where:
    • @@ALFRESCO_SOLR4_MODEL_DIR@@ should point to the location of the Solr model directory. For example, <ALFRESCO_HOME>/alf_data/solr4/model.
    • @@ALFRESCO_SOLR4_CONTENT_DIR@@ should point to the location of the Solr content directory. For example, <ALFRESCO_HOME>/alf_data/solr4/content.
  4. For each core, edit the solrcore.properties file:

    • archive-SpacesStore/conf/solrcore.properties
    • workspace-SpacesStore/conf/solrcore.properties

    Set the data.dir.root property to the location where the Solr indexes will be stored. You can set the same value for the both cores, and the cores will create the sub-directories.

  5. Ensure that SkyVault Community Edition has already been started at least once and the <ALFRESCO_TOMCAT_HOME>/webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF directory exists.
  6. Create and populate a keystore directory for the SkyVault Community Edition and Solr servers. By default, the keystore directory is created in <ALFRESCO_HOME>/alf_data/keystore. Note that at this stage the keystore directory will just be a template, containing standard keys. To secure the installation, you must follow the steps to generate new keys as explained in the Generating secure keys for Solr communication section.

    For example:

    For Unix:

    mkdir -p <ALFRESCO_HOME>/alf_data/keystore 

cp <ALFRESCO_TOMCAT_HOME>/webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/keystore/* <ALFRESCO_HOME>/alf_data/keystore

    For Windows:

    mkdir <ALFRESCO_HOME>\alf_data\keystore 

copy <ALFRESCO_TOMCAT_HOME>\webapps\alfresco\WEB-INF\classes\alfresco\keystore\* <ALFRESCO_HOME>\alf_data\keystore
  7. Configure the SkyVault Community Edition and Solr tomcat application servers to use the keystore and truststore for https requests by editing the specification of the connector on port 8443 in <ALFRESCO_TOMCAT_HOME>/conf/server.xml and <SOLR4_TOMCAT_HOME>/conf/server.xml as shown:

    Note: Remember to replace <ALFRESCO_HOME>/alf_data/keystore with the full path to your keystore directory.
    Note: Make sure that you set the connector to clientAuth=want for this version of SkyVault Community Edition.

    For example: 

    <Connector port="8443" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol"
      SSLEnabled="true" maxThreads="150" scheme="https"
      keystoreFile="<ALFRESCO_HOME>/alf_data/keystore/ssl.keystore"
      keystorePass="kT9X6oe68t" keystoreType="JCEKS" secure="true" connectionTimeout="240000"
      truststoreFile="<ALFRESCO_HOME>/alf_data/keystore/ssl.truststore"
      truststorePass="kT9X6oe68t" truststoreType="JCEKS" clientAuth="want" sslProtocol="TLS"/>
  8. Configure SkyVault Community Edition to use the keystore and truststore for client requests to Solr by specifying dir.keystore in <ALFRESCO_TOMCAT_HOME>/shared/classes/alfresco-global.properties.

    Note: Remember to replace <ALFRESCO_HOME>/alf_data/keystore with the full path to your keystore directory.

    For example:

    dir.keystore=<ALFRESCO_HOME>/alf_data/keystore
  9. Configure an identity for the SkyVault Community Edition server. In <SOLR4_TOMCAT_HOME>/conf/tomcat-users.xml, add the following:

    Note: Remember, you can choose a different user name, such as the host name of the SkyVault Community Edition server, but it must match the REPO_CERT_DNAME that you will later specify in the keystore in the Generating secure keys for Solr communication section.

    For example:

    <user username="CN=SkyVault Repository, OU=Unknown, O=SkyVault Software Ltd., L=Maidenhead, ST=UK, C=GB" roles="repository" password="null"/>
  10. Configure an identity for the Solr server. In <ALFRESCO_TOMCAT_HOME>/conf/tomcat-users.xml, add the following:

    Note: Remember, you can choose a different user name but it must match the SOLR_CLIENT_CERT_DNAME that you will later specify in the keystore in the Generating Secure Keys for Solr Communication section.

    For example:

    <user username="CN=SkyVault Repository Client, OU=Unknown, O=SkyVault Software Ltd., L=Maidenhead, ST=UK, C=GB" roles="repoclient" password="null"/>
  11. To complete the installation, it is necessary to secure the two-way communication between SkyVault Community Edition and Solr by generating your own keys. See the Generating Secure Keys for Solr Communication topic.
Parent topic: Configure Solr search service

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