Separate indexer for huge document libraries

Question

Need some help/advice for SP search setup. A single-server MOSS 2007 farm hosts sites for 5 departments in the company. A document library corresponding to one of the department sites is growing at a rapid pace and is weighing down on server performance. This particular department also wants the search to include a network shared folder. So I want to do the following:

1. Add a new server to the farm, so indexing can be offloaded from the current server.
2. Find a way to make the search results for users of that department to include only their department content plus the shared folder content?

Task #1 should be straightforward. It is task #2 that stumps me because I am a total newbie with this aspect of SP customization. I imagine adding a new content source for including the shared folder content in the index is compulsory. Should I set up a new search scope for search results to include that department's content and the shared folder content?

Will appreciate any help/advice/suggestions!

Answer 1

As you have mentioned Task #1 is pretty straight forward and you need to just add a new index server to the farm with the indexing service enabled.

Task #2 -

SharePoint contents - The primary search content source for searching all the site contents in Central admin should remain. This 'X' department which has growing contents can also use the same crawled contents and use the same scope for contents inside SharePoint. All necessary security measures will be taken care internally by SharePoint.

Network files - There should be definitely another search content source for the network files.

Please view this blog post which describes in detail how it is done in SharePoint 2010. If I remember correctly, the same options are available in MOSS 2007 too.

Alltogether, you will need to have a separate search content source and a separate search scope in your web site to view the results from the network shared folder.

Answer 2

For #2 I would do this:

1. Create 5 scopes, one for each department
2. For each scope, create at least two rules to include both department specific content and the common file share.

RULE 1: Scope Rule Type: Web Address Web Address: http://site/dept_N (or other, depending on how depts are separated) Behavior: Include

RULE 2: Scope Rule Type: Content Source Content Source: Shared folder address Behavior: Include

Then if you have search box on each department's site(s), you can configure the search box to use that department's Scope so that users don't even need to see the scope selection drop down.