Examine Indexes in a Load Balanced Setup

Hi,

Can someone please explain to me how Examine Indexes are supposed to work in a setup with 2 x Azure App Services, one for front end and one for back end?

If I understand correctly, each of these App Services will maintain their own set of index files (in their App_Data\TEMP\ExamineIndexes folder) which they will sync to the EnvironmentTemp using the recommended Examine.LuceneEngine.Directories.SyncTempEnvDirectoryFactory,Examine Directory Factory as per docs.

If this is correct, then how are the index files kept up to date on the front end server, given that all of the publishing actions are happening on the back end server?

Is the idea that the EnvironmentTemp is shared between the two App Services? If so, is there any way that I can confirm this?

In a nutshell, my issue is that the indexes are present in the App_Data\TEMP\ExamineIndexes folder on the back end App Service and accessing the site on the back end URL allows me to utilise the search. However, the indexes are not present in the same folder on the front end App Service and I can not search when accessing the site via the front end URL.

Any pointers would be great.

Thanks

PS. Sorry if the category of the question doesn’t seem right, there isn’t one that this question really fits in to!

Edit: I’ve read the following in the Flexible Load Balancing documentation

  • Each front-end server checks to see if there are any outstanding
    instructions it hasn’t processed yet
  • When a front-end server detects that there are pending instructions,
    it downloads them and processes them and in turn updates it’s cache,
    cache files and indexes on its own file system

If I’m understanding correctly, this answers my question of how this should work. A change on the Admin application is added to the database, picked up by the Front End application polling the database and then applied to the Front End’s local cache/index files.

Is there any way we can verify if this is happening?


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://our.umbraco.com/forum/97970-examine-indexes-in-a-load-balanced-setup