Tag Archives: SOLR

Install Multiple Instances of SOLR for Sitecore Development

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Did you know that you can run multiple instances of SOLR on a machine for local development as a Sitecore developer?

Since we have moved on from Lucene to SOLR in our development efforts starting with 9 it makes sense to move to SOLR starting in version 8 as the move will be inevitable. With Lucene as our old index provider this didn’t used to be a problem having several instances of Sitecore on our local machines, but when you start using SOLR you need to be cognizant of a few things so you can set up your development environments quickly.

I read a great blog post earlier that gave me what I needed to get 2 SOLR instances setup on my local machine. This can easily be increased as Sitecore projects come into play in your Sitecore travels. Below is the blog post I mentioned, which was a great starting point:

Install Multiple Instances of SOLR for Sitecore on a single server

What you need to know when setting up many instances is that there needs to be a common JRE that will work for ALL SOLR instances on your local machine!

I am currently using SOLR 6.6.2 for SItecore 9, and SOLR 5.5.2 for Sitecore 8.2. When I tried to start my SOLR 5.5.2 instance I got an error that I needed “Java 1.7 or higher” even though I had JRE 9.0.1. Makes no sense right? Bottom line is that SOLR 5.5.2 doesn’t play well with the later versions of Java.

Again, I needed to have a common JRE that worked with both instances of SOLR (5.5.2 & 6.6.2) and that was Java 8 (8u162). Once I uninstalled 9.0.1, installed Java 8 (8u162), and then modified my JAVA_HOME environment variables to point to the freshly installed Java 8 (8u162) instance, I was able to start both SOLR instances as Windows services with NSSM on port 8985 (5.5.2) and port 8986 (6.6.2) respectively.

Once you make these changes you will then need to set your Sitecore instances to point to the correct SOLR instance accordingly using a patch config in the following config file “App_Config\Sitecore.ContentSearch.Solr.DefaultIndexConfiguration.config” in the “ContentSearch.Solr.ServiceBaseAddress” setting below:

<!-- SERVICE BASE ADDRESS
Base url of the Solr server. (minus any cores and minus a trailing slash)
-->
<setting name="ContentSearch.Solr.ServiceBaseAddress" value="http://localhost:8985/solr" />

Once you have that in place per Sitecore instance you are all set. Happy coding!

Rebuilding Reporting Database for Experience Profile Data

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Are you familiar with the Experience Profile in Sitecore?

This is a phenomenal tool for Marketers that have audacious goals for their organization. The Sitecore marketing team talks about the Experience Profile as such, “Data-driven marketers who want a 360-degree view of their customer’s interaction with all digital channels over time and in real-time will find just that in the Sitecore Experience Profile”. If you have never taken a good look at what is possible with the Experience Profile, check it out!

Now, what does this have to do with rebuilding the reporting database? Good question! Experience Profile is completely dependent upon the Sitecore_Analytics_Index. If there is no data in the Sitecore_Analytics_Index then there will be no data in the Experience Profile. So, how does data get into the Sitecore_Analytics_Index? Let’s a take a look:

In this example using a typical model of a 1 CM (Content Management Server) with 2 CD (Content Delivery Server) environment, the CD server/s will be delivering customer experience data to MongoDB during the customer session/s. When the session/s ends, typically after 20 minutes (unless set to end earlier) then the data gets flushed using the xDB Processing Server/s. If you have not setup the xDB Processing Server/s on a standalone server then the processing will happen on Content Management server. The processing will take this data and migrate it to your Reporting database, where it will reside, and then be indexed, for performance reasons, by the Sitecore_Analytics_Index for use in the Experience Profile.

Now, why might be ever want to rebuild the reporting database and how do we even do that? Good question! If you don’t see any data in the Experience Profile, and you have a license for the functionality, then, “Houston…we have a problem”. Below are some steps to troubleshoot:

  1. Check the logs using Sitecore Log Analyzer on the Sitecore Marketplace, and see if you have any Mongo connection errors. Connectivity may either have been disrupted or never configured properly. If you are using SOLR look for SOLR errors relating to the Sitecore_Analytics_Index as well.
  2. Ensure you have MongoDB connectivity by using RoboMongo to ensure that data is truly being collected in the collections.
  3. Check the Reporting database tables to see if there is any data being collected. If not, then the xDB processing may not be working for some reason OR you have a connection string missing or incorrect to the Reporting database.
  4. Ensure if you are using SOLR that your cores are setup correctly along with configsets particularly for Sitecore_Analytics_Index.
  5. Check the Sitecore_Analytics_Index for any indexed records. More than likely you will see no records.

If you went through 1-4 and the data is all there, but still don’t have any records in your Sitecore_Analytics_Index then you are now looking at rebuilding your reporting database.

But wait, why don’t we just rebuild the index for the SItecore_Analytics_Index? Good question! Adam Conn explains this in his blog post, but we cannot manually do this, as it is done behind the scenes in Sitecore. There is a workaround to get the Sitecore_Analyics_Index to show up with the rest in the Select Search Index dialog box, but it can be problematic as Adam shows in his post.

Now is when the Rebuild Reporting Database tool comes to the rescue. When you rebuild the reporting database you also then set the Sitecore_Analytics_Index to be re-indexed through this process.

To rebuild your reporting database you will actually need to create a second reporting database to use with the Rebuild Reporting Database administration tool. Instructions on how to do that can be found here. Now, once you have a second reporting database in place you can then use this tool in the Administration Tools area of Sitecore:

Rebuild Reporting Database

Rebuild Reporting Database

When you run this tool you will rebuild the reporting database thereby re-indexing the Sitecore_Analytics_Index. At this point, you should start seeing data flow into the Experience Profile. Happy coding!