Description

When using Solr as the search provider for Sitecore, there is a variety of Sitecore settings that can be configured to improve performance.

Symptoms might include:

• High memory consumption by Sitecore services.
• Slow average response time for the xConnect search services.
• The inability of Solr to complete durable back-ups of the xDB index.

Note: These are Sitecore specific settings, not Solr ones. Refer to the Solr documentation as the reference on configuring Solr.

Solution

To improve the performance of Sitecore, you can configure one of the following settings:

• ContentSearch.SearchMaxResults

  Controls the number of search results the search provider is requested to retrieve.

  A large number of requested documents puts a strain on the Solr server, the network, and Sitecore, which has to deserialize all the results.

  The value of the setting can be overridden on per-query basis using Take or Page LINQ extensions.
  We recommend you always specify the number of requested documents in the query.

  As a safety net, you can reduce the value of the ContentSearch.SearchMaxResults setting. The exact value should be carefully evaluated within the overall Sitecore implementation and thoroughly tested during the development process.

  Note: The setting must be patched in all Sitecore XP instances.

  For more about setting up Solr for Sitecore XP and the maximum search results, refer to the article Walkthrough: Setting up Solr based on your XP solutions version.

• MaximumCommitMilliseconds

  This setting determines the number of milliseconds that can pass before changes sent to Solr are committed and made available for search.

  Sitecore XP can place a heavy load on the xConnect search service in certain high traffic scenarios. When using Solr as the search provider, the implementation might observe high average response times for the xConnect search service. This can be addressed by tuning this setting.

  In case of a performance issue, you can increase the value of the MaximumCommitMilliseconds setting, in the \App_data\jobs\continuous\IndexWorker\App_data\Config\Sitecore\SearchIndexer\sc.Xdb.Collection.IndexWriter.SOLR.xml file for the xConnect search service:

  <MaximumCommitMilliseconds>600000</MaximumCommitMilliseconds>

  Note: If near real-time updates of the xDB index are critical for the solution, the setting should remain as close to the default value as possible.

  For more information about the xConnect search indexing service, refer to the article Configuring the xConnect Search Indexer based on your XP solutions version.