Overview


Since the 3.2 release, Aspire connectors are able to crawl in distributed mode automatically. Since all the crawl  control data is stored in MongoDB, by just adding more Aspire servers configured to use the same MongoDB, the common connectors are going to crawl distributively.

Each connector is responsible for talking to the repositories, scanning through all the items to fetch and store its IDs to MongoDB for being processed later by any other server or itself.



Configuration


In order to setup an Aspire Cluster for Distributed Processing, you need to do the following steps:

  1. Setup MongoDB

    You need to configure all Aspire servers to use the same MongoDB Installation, configure all the Aspire Servers config/settings.xml file




    If you need to connect to a multi node MongoDB installation, check: Connect to a Multi-node MongoDB Installation

  2. Setup Zookeeper

    More details for Zookeeper installation and settings at Failover Settings (Zookeeper)




  3. Install the content sources to distribute


    Now it is time to think about which content sources you want to crawl distributively, and from what Aspire Servers, according to your solution architecture.

    For this, configure the content sources in one of the servers and once you have them correctly configured export the content source and import it into the Aspire Servers you want to crawl this content source in parallel.

Crawl Control


Controlling distributed processing is very simple. Simply log in to any Aspire node in the cluster and perform the required action (start, pause, resume or stop). All Aspire nodes in the cluster will then move to the same state.

If you need to shutdown one (or all) servers, you must first pause all running crawls. If you DO NOT pause the crawl and shutdown Aspire on a node in the cluster, Aspire will pause all running crawls before shutting down


Adding or Removing Nodes on the Aspire Cluster


If you need to add Aspire nodes to the Aspire cluster, simply start an Aspire instance that uses the same Zookeeper and MongoDB instance. As Aspire starts, it will copy the current configuration from the cluster and begin processing (if crawls are currently in process).

If you need to remove an Aspire node from the cluster, either pause all running crawls or allow all them to finish. Once no crawls are active, simply stop Aspire on the desired servers (and turn them off if required). Once only the desired Aspire nodes are running, login to the user interface on any Aspire node and start or un-pause crawls as required

If you need to remove one (or all) Aspire nodes from the cluster, you must first pause all running crawls. If you DO NOT pause the crawl and shutdown Aspire on a node in the cluster, Aspire will pause all running crawls before shutting down