Novell best practices require that every Filr-clustered deployment have two Filr Search appliances. A Filr cluster can operate with one search appliance, but this should only occur under special circumstances, such as when reindexing is required. Figure 4-4 illustrates that two Filr Search appliances are the second and third components deployed when creating a Filr Cluster.
Figure 4-4 Setting up two Filr Search appliances
You can use the steps that follow to gain hands-on experience with setting up Filr Search appliances, or for general guidance as you set up a Filr-clustered deployment in your own lab or production network. For complete instructions, see the Novell Filr 1.1 Installation and Configuration Guide.
Download and configure the virtual environment for a Filr Search appliance as documented in Downloading the Search Index Appliance and Configuring the Virtual Environment
in the Novell Filr 1.1 Installation and Configuration Guide.
For example, for a VMware Workstation deployment this involves the following basic steps:
Download and unzip the Filr Search appliance archive.
Open the Filrsearch*.ovf file.
Name the appliance and click
.Add a second hard disk to the appliance for the /vastorage mount point.
Add a third hard disk to the appliance for the log files (/var) mount point.
Adjust the appliance’s resources (RAM and so forth) as needed.
Power on the appliance.
Install the Filr Search appliance that you downloaded and configured in Step 1 as documented in Installing the Search Index Appliance
in the Novell Filr 1.1 Installation and Configuration Guide.
Accept the license agreement.
Specify the passwords and time settings, then click
.Specify the network settings, then click
.Specify the second hard disk you added in Step 1.d as the data storage location for /vastorage by clicking .
When the terminal prompt screen appears, the search appliance is ready to configure.
Specify the third hard disk you added in Step 1.e as the log file storage location for /var by clicking .
When the terminal prompt screen appears, the search appliance is ready to configure.
Repeat from Step 1.b to install a second Filr Search appliance, then continue with Section 4.4.2, Deploying the Filr Search Appliances.
Using a browser, access the Appliance Administration Utility on the first Filr Search appliance by entering the following URL:
https://IP_Address:9443
Where IP_Address is the IP address of the first Filr appliance.
Log in as the vaadmin user using the password that you set in Step 2.b.
Click the
button to launch the .Click
to confirm that this is a new appliance.Specify and confirm a password for the default Lucene user, then click
.At the bottom of the Search Settings dialog, click
.Repeat from Step 1 to configure a second Filr Search appliance, then continue with Setting Up the SQL Database.
Close the browser.