Showing posts with label FAST. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FAST. Show all posts

Friday 22 July 2011

Working with QR Server in FS4SP

Overview:  The Query Results Server is an IIS website that allows you to check that FAST search is working.  You can see if managed properties are being populated, navigators are working ect...
Tips:
  • To use QR-Server you must be on the local machine use the url: http://localhost:13280/
  • SP2010 uses a users session for security so using QR-Server won't work (always returns empty results) so you need to turn off security as follows:
1.> Turn off security in the config file C:\FASTSearch\etc\qrserver\qtf-config.xml (take a copy before modifying the file);
2.> Comment out the line element instance-ref name="securityfql" critical="1"
3.> PS C:\FASTSearch\bin> .\nctrl.exe restart qrserver
This will make the QR-Server take the xml config security change.
4.> Perform your query

Thanks to Job Maelene for all his FS4SP patience.


More Info:
leonardocsouza has a great series on FS4SP

Thursday 21 July 2011

Managed Properties in FAST

Problem: Create mapped managed properties in FAST (FS4SP) using PoweShell.
Initial Hypothesis:  You can create Managed Properties that are mapped to crawled properties using the UI thru CA.  However, for deployment thru environments it is better to script the mapped managed properties creation using Powershell.
Instructions:
1.> I created a Document Library that has extra columns for: Section, Appointment, Clinic & Hospital number as shown below.
2.> Ensure you have performed a "Full Crawl" on the Content SSA (FS4SP has 2 SSA in order for it to work, the content/index and the query SSA).
3.> PS to retriev the crawled property names, they will be at the bottom of the txt file created and are prefixed with "ows_".
4.> Find the crawled property name, this will be used in the next PS script that associates the crawled property with the managed property.  Open c:\cp.txt to see the crawled property name, this is usually at the bottom of the file.
5.> Use PS to 1) create a new managed property, 2) map the appropraite crawled property onto the managed property.
6.> Run the Full Crawl again thereby propulating the Managed Properties
7.> Check the managed properties in Central Admin (CA)
8.> Perform a search to ensure the managed property works i.e. clinic:CL123

Office Web Apps on a DC

Problem: Office Web Apps on a developer machine which has it's own domain controller.  Can view word documents in the browser, editing of docx files stangely works.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff431687.aspx

FAST previews/thumbails need Office Web Apps running.

Summary: Install Office Web Apps pre AutoSPInstalller is run.  Then activate in the autospinstaller.  Otherwise install the office web apps but only do the config of the web apps, don't run the SP config wizard.

Tuesday 12 July 2011

Adding FAST for SharePoint to PowerGUI

Problem: Add FAST for SharePoint 2010 intellisense support in PowerGUI.
Resolution: Open PowerGUI and add the FAST for SharePoint library.

Tuesday 31 May 2011

FAST Search Overview

Overview:  Researching FAST for SharePoint 2010 Enterprise, I am logging my findings to provide a basic overview for using FAST with SP2010.

FAST for SP2010 OOTB Search Results

Tips:
  • Install FAST on it's own Hardware x64 Windows 2008 R2, need 4GB RAM and 4CPU's min should use 16GB RAM and 8 CPU's;
  • Min disk 50GB, 1TB with multiple spindles recommended;
  • Install FAST on seperate Hw (not on SP2010 or DC machines);
  • Neeed Internet access port 80 and IP adress should be static;
  • FAST need SP2010 Enterprise Edition;
  • SP2010 search must be installed it is still used for the People search results;
  • FAST uses a db for configuration of FAST so back-off your existing SQL Server farm used by SP2010;
  • The indexed data out of the content databases is stored in FAST indexes on the file system not in the SQL Server db;
Technical Overview:
Main components are: Crawler (examines the data to be made searchable), Web Analyser and Indexer (performs the search queries).


Crawler servers maximum of 30 million docs per node (server), crawler produces 2 databases. Sizing is roughly 3GB per million docs in the log file and 4GB per million docs in content.

Web Analyser servers has a maximum recommendation of 30 million per node. Storage of 5GB per million docs.

Indexer servers the queries back and recommend staying under 15 million docs per node. Need roughly 120GB/million documents crawled. Due to the high IOPS required by the index servers it best to keep these as physical servers. VMWare experts and tune VM’s for high IOPS but a specialist is highly recommended.

Licensing is done per server or VM and is roughly 14K/server/VM (Not verified)

People search is still surfaced using SP2010 Search so don’t remove it from the SP2010 farm. I believe you can use FAST to do people search also but it doesn’t support phonetic searches so probably a good idea to leave people search with SharePoint’s enterprise search.

Virtualization: Don’t virtualize the SQL Server, use a SAN. Don’t virtualize the Indexer servers.

Advantages of FAST:

• Higher performance and scalability

• Facetted searches are provided OOTB

• Improved meta data extractors

• Previews and thumb previews for PowerPoint, word and pdf documents

• Federation has exact number counts (I love this)

• Programmatic hook into the content publishing pipeline

Setting up FAST for SP2010 on a devloper VM  This is based on articles on technet about FAST for SP2010 and is not my original work, it has been addapted to my specific requiremnt for FAST on a development VM.
References:

Simple Logical Architecture http://www.social-point.com/sharepoint-2010-search-and-fast-search

FAST for SharePoint 2010 Troubleshooting

1.> Check FAST servers are running.  PS>nctrl status
2.> Ensure OSearch14 Windows service is running as 1 of the 2 FAST installed specified accounts 
3.> Check the Certificate Connection using PS (SharePoint)> Ping-SPEnterpriseSearchContentService -HostName FS4SP1.demo.dev:13391

PS> Restart-Service -Name "OSearch14"
4.> Authorisation crawl errors.  Check the account that is performing the crawl has permissions



  • FAST logs are found in <>\FastSearch\var\log
  • \syslog\all.log is the best log for fault finding.
  • \querylogs shows all the logs for queries
  • Use Perfmon to monitor FAST, fast has it's own set of counters. 
Updated 2017-04-05:  SP 2013 and SP2016 allows breaking into the Search pipeline on the crawl  using CEWS (Content Enrichment Web Service).  Office 365/SharePoint 2013 does not support CEWS.  Also watch out for how Deletes go thru the Web Service!  Also CEWS only has one registration of a CEWS Web Service allowed per query pipeline so look at the Microsoft CEWS toolkit if you need more than 1 web service on the crawl).  
http://www.netwoven.com/2014/07/using-multiple-endpoints-as-a-content-enrichment-web-service-in-sharepoint-2013-search/