Recreating the Search index after migrating to IBM Connections 5.5

When you update or migrate IBM® Connections from a previous release, you might need to rebuild the search index.

Before you begin

Important: When you perform the steps described in this procedure, search functionality is not available to your users.
Note: You must delete any Search-related data from your IBM Connections content stores, such as indexes and statistics. The 5.5 installation generates new Search-related data.
If you are upgrading from Connections 4.5, do not use this method of recreating the Search Index. Instead, refer to the method described in Migrating the search index from the IBM Connections 4.5 or 5.0 deployment to IBM Connections 5.5.

About this task

Where there is no suitable index available for use in the migrated system, the search index needs to be rebuilt in full, using a process known as initial indexing. A full new search index is build on a single node to cover all content on the system. When this operation is complete, the new index is rolled out to the other nodes in the Search cluster (each Search node maintains its own local index). This happens automatically if all the nodes are online at the time of indexing completion, but if some of those nodes were not online at that time, the index can be copied manually.

Procedure

  1. Stop all the nodes that are running the Search application. If there are existing search indexes on these nodes, delete them by performing the steps described in Deleting the index.
  2. Start all the Search nodes in the cluster.
  3. Support for indexing of new content types has been added between the Connections 4.0 and 5.0 releases. To ensure that all content is included in the indexing process, restore the full set of default indexing tasks.
    Refer to Restoring the default scheduled tasks for Search for instructions on running the SearchService.resetAllTasks() command.
    Note: In case you have configured custom scheduled tasks and do not want to restore the default scheduled tasks, and if your indexing task names specific application names (instead of 'all_configured'), then you must add the people_finder application name (added in IBM Connections 5.0) to this list. You can update the task to include 'people_finder', by deleting it and adding it back.
    For more information about:
    • Listing existing indexing tasks using the SearchService.listIndexingTasks() command, refer to Listing scheduled tasks.
    • Removing an indexing task using the SearchService.deleteTask(String taskName) command, refer to Deleting scheduled tasks.
    • Adding an indexing task using the SearchService.addIndexingTask(String taskName, String schedule, String startBy, String applicationNames, Boolean optimizeFlag) command, refer to Adding scheduled tasks.
  4. Recreate the index by completing one of the following steps:
    • Create a one-off task that indexes all the installed IBM Connections applications in your deployment. For more information, see Running one-off tasks.
    • Wait for the next scheduled indexing task to run.

    You can tell that the index is built on the indexing node when the INDEX.READY and CRAWLING_VERSION files are present in the index directory. The Search index directory is defined by the IBM WebSphere® Application Server variable SEARCH_INDEX_DIR.

    After the index is built, the next phase is index roll-out. During this phase, the files in the index directory are automatically copied to the Search staging folder, which is defined by the WebSphere Application Server variable SEARCH_INDEX_SHARED_COPY_LOCATION. The files in the Search staging folder are then copied to each index folder on the remaining nodes.
    Important: Do not stop your deployment until the index has been copied to all nodes. If the server is stopped during this process, the index will not be successfully rolled out to all nodes. In this event, you need to manually copy the index from the staging location to the other nodes.