Posted by sjdavis on February 7, 2011 at 4:47pm
Anyone have experience working with AcquiaSearch or Apache Solr?
We're looking at using one of these on our flagship web site (ColumbusLibrary.org) and are running into issues with firewall problems with AcquiaSearch, among others, since AcquiaSearch is a "cloud" solution. Seems like the setup for Apache Solr is complicated.
Also curious what the real pricing is for AcquiaSearch, Acquia is not very clear on what we'll really be charged - using mysterious "slices" for tiered pricing.
Would love to hear your input on AcquiaSearch or Apache Solr search, especially your specific implementation and experiences.
Comments
Apache Solr looks a little
Apache Solr looks a little intimidating, but (from what I recall from setting it up on one of my servers a couple years ago) it's really pretty straightforward to get a basic installation running. Just make sure the prerequisites are installed, unpack it, do "java -jar start.jar", and configure it. Setting up the Drupal module was just as easy. It's been providing much-improved search results (compared to Drupal core search) for a couple years, and has required essentially zero maintenance.
Acquia Search FTW
Disclaimer... I'm on a short term contract with Acquia
Years before I began working directly with Acquia, I was using their service and recommending it to clients. I launched my 1st Acquia Search Site back in 2009 http://leonard.com They had 4 offices over 200 employees [attorneys, paralegals, directors, board members, etc] they had 54 practice areas acros 16 industries. They had newsletters, articles, alerts, staff-biographies, podcasts, events and more content types than I can recall right now.
Acquia Search was the only solution I was recommending. They are very happy with it. They use a single slice at $349/yr
What is a slice?
Slices don't have a direct correlation to pages or nodes. It is more a measure of how many bytes your index takes up. 40,000 nodes with 4 fields each could be similar to only 20,000 pages with 8 fields each. Make sense?
The FIREWALL issues is answered here -> http://acquia.com/node/955652#comment-14047
I've also been strongly recommending Acquia Hosting to my customers who don't want to hassle with the infrastructure headaches and want some one else to be responsible for keeping Drupal running and working fast.
Give Acquia a call at 1.888.922.7842 and get the facts. Acquia Search is a value added feature that I strongly recommend to every project I'm involved in.
I recommend signing up for
I recommend signing up for the 30 day trial and indexing all of your content. That way you can see exactly how many slices you will need. The basic subscription will probably be enough for you. If not call the sales team and have them customize a subscription that suits your needs.
If you can't work something out with sales AND you love the enhanced search results that is the time to look at setting up your own solr server.
We found Acquia search plus http://drupal.org/project/apachesolr_attachments worked very well for us. More.
Also I think http://acquia.com/community/resources/acquia-tv/acquia-search-webinar is worth watching if you are adding solr search. Especially the part where Robert Douglass speaks.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Thanks for the suggestions. I've gone ahead and started a trial. Since its a cloud solution that uses floating IP's we're having major firewall issues that do not let our servers communicate with Acquia, but Acquia's helping us through it. I'm confident we'll get it working soon. As far as evaluating the product, it seems good. Response on search results are excellent, and indexing is pretty fast and easy.
Hope to see you all at DrupalCon Chicago 2011!