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September 14, 2022

Tom Humbarger

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3 min. read

Hosted Apache Solr announced that they are shutting down on October 31, 2022. This means that all customers will need to find a replacement for their hosted Solr deployments before that date.

The managed Solr offering from SearchStax is one of the recommended options to replace Hosted Apache Solr and this blog post looks at how to create an account, set up and connect SearchStax Cloud to Drupal.

Setting Up and Deploying SearchStax Cloud

We have identified that our SearchStax Cloud product, Dedicated Node on AWS with 1GB memory and 8GB storage option, would suffice for most Hosted Apache Solr customers. This option will cost $40 per month and can host multiple indexes.

To get started with SearchStax, you will have to sign up for a free trial. After you start your free trial, you can either create a deployment with the 14-day free trial or you can add your credit card details to create a paid account immediately.

Here are the steps to set up an account on SearchStax Cloud:

  1. Sign up for a free 14-day Trial Account at https://app.searchstax.com/freetrial/
  2. Verify your email address to activate your account 
  3. Sign-in to SearchStax Cloud
  4. If you want to start a paid deployment immediately, select the green Upgrade button from the top menu to enter your credit card details
  5. Create a deployment
    1. Select Dedicated under INFRASTRUCTURE in left nav column
    2. Create a Deployment name
    3. Select AWS as Cloud Provider
    4. Select your Region
    5. Select Dedicated Node
    6. Select NDN1 – 1GB memory, 8GB storage (note: if you want a larger instance, you may select the NDN2 which costs $80 per month) 
    7. Select your Solr version (we support Solr versions from 5.1.0 to 8.11.1 — check out all of the Solr versions we support)
    8. Click on Create Deployment button

Once the deployment is created, you will receive a welcome email and an email informing you that your New Solr deployment is live which should take less than 10 minutes after you click the create button. The email will have links to your Cluster URL and Zookeeper Ensemble along with links to our product documentation.

During the free trial, we will send you additional informational emails and will send 2 warnings as you near the end of your free trial. Before your trial ends, you will need to convert it to a paid account to continue using our service.

Connecting Drupal with SearchStax

You can find more information on integrating SearchStax Cloud with Drupal in our product documentation:

If you have any questions about SearchStax Cloud, you can submit a Support ticket directly from the application. Click on the Support button in the upper right-hand corner of the application to submit a request.

Connecting Drupal with SearchStax

The SearchStax Cloud plan that will suffice for most Apache Hosted Solr customers is the $40 per month AWS deployment with 1G Memory and 8GB of Storage.

With a Dedicated plan from SearchStax, you will be able to host multiple indexes on the same installation which means your QA, Dev and Production indexes can run on the same SearchStax deployment as long as you stay within the Memory and Storage constraints. While this plan is more than the $10 per month plan from Hosted Apache Solr, you will not need a separate instance for each index.

By Tom Humbarger

Senior Marketing Programs Manager

“…search should not only be for those organizations with massive search budgets...”

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