Add or remove an index partition

Applies to: SharePoint Server 2010

In Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Search, index partitions are groups of query components, each of which holds a subset of the full text index and which return search results to the query originator. Each index partition is associated with a specific property database containing metadata associated with a specific set of crawled content. You can distribute the load of query servicing by adding index partitions to a Search Service Application and placing their query components on different farm servers.

You can decide which servers in a farm will service queries by creating a query component on that server. If you want to balance the load of servicing queries across multiple farm servers, add query components to an index partition and associate them with the servers you want to service queries. See Add or remove a query component for more information.

To add an index partition to a Search Service Application

1. In Central Administration, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.

2. On the Service Applications page, click the name of the Search Service Application to which you want to add an index partition.

3. On the Search Administration page, in the Search Application Topology section, click the Modify button.

   Note

   The SharePoint Search topology cannot be changed in Standalone installations.

4. On the Manage Search Topology page, click New, and then click Index Partition and Query Component.

5. In the Add Query Component dialog box, in the Server list, click the farm server to which you want to add the first query component of the new index partition.

6. In the Associated Property Database list, click the property database you want to associate with the new index partition.

7. In the Location of Index field, you can optionally enter the location on the server that will be used for storage of the index files after receiving them from the crawl components. If you want to accept the default location, leave the contents of this field unchanged.

8. In the Failover-only Query Component section, you can select the Set this query component as failover-only check box if you want the query component to receive queries only in the event of a failure of the primary query component in the same index partition. If you are creating a new index partition, you should leave this box unchecked. You can add a failover-only query component to the index partition later if necessary.

9. Click OK to add the new index partition and its first query component to the job queue.

10. On the Manage Search Topology page, click the Apply Topology Changes button to start the SharePoint timer job that will add the new index partition and its first query component to the specified server.

    Note

    You can make other changes to the Search topology and then apply them all at once by clicking the Apply Topology Changes button.

To remove an index partition from a Search Service Application

You can remove an index partition from a Search Service Application, which also removes all index files associated with the index partition. To remove an index partition, you delete all query components associated with the index partition, as described in the following procedure.

1. In Central Administration, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.

2. On the Service Applications page, click the name of the Search Service Application from which you want to remove an index partition.

3. On the Search Administration page, in the Search Application Topology section, click the Modify button.

   Note

   The SharePoint Search topology cannot be changed in Standalone installations.

4. On the Manage Search Topology page, click any query component in the index partition you want to remove, and then click Delete.

5. In the message box that appears, click OK to delete the query component.

6. Repeat steps 4-5 for every query component in the index partition you want to remove. Removing the last query component also removes the index partition.

   Note

   If you remove all the query components from an index partition, the index partition will be removed from the farm completely and all the data from the partition will be copied and distributed into the remaining partitions. Depending on resource availability and the volume of data in the partition, this operation may take a long time and may affect farm performance. You cannot remove the last remaining index partition in a given Search Service Application.

7. On the Manage Search Topology page, click the Apply Topology Changes button to start the SharePoint timer job that will remove the index partition and its query components from the farm.

   Note

   You can make other changes to the Search topology and then apply them all at once by clicking the Apply Topology Changes button.

See Also

Concepts

Search topology operations in SharePoint Server 2010 (white paper)