The Best script to configure Search across 2 servers: Redundancy, Performance, and Reliability?

Question

I have a very simple three-tier SharePoint 2013 farm which its topology consists of: : (DB Server, Application Server, and Web Front End Server). Each server has somewhat decent resources e.g. 15 GB RAM, 4 cores, and 600 GB disk space.

I want to configure the Search service to run on both APP & WFE servers.

Some SharePoint Search experts suggest that: Using two servers you will have proper redundancy, So, You will get twice the query performance as both will serve results.

That's why I am looking for the absolute best script to configure the search across 2 servers and accomplish the desired redundancy.

What do you think of this script: (http://www.powershellmagazine.com/2013/04/29/creating-and-configuring-a-sharepoint-2013-search-service-application/) ? Is this the ticket that I am looking for? Or, Do you have a better innovative and a high performance script to share?

I really look forward to hearing your inputs !

Thank you !

Answer 1

The script that you use doesn't matter (as long as it works). There is no script that will give you "performance". Performance of search will depend on more than just where it runs - it will depend on the content you are searching, the total size of all that content, how many other services are running and the most important resource I/O at your DB layer.

So - it you want redundancy on a two server farm, configure all your search components to run on both servers, load balance them for user requests, and be sure you include index replicas and not just split the index across the two servers. Depending on your content and usage pattern this will probably be the most performant for you as well.

You could also split the Search service up, moving the Query and Index components to your user facing server, and running the remainder of the search services on your app server. Assuming your I/O is not a bottleneck this will probably also work well for you.

Keep in mind also - Microsoft does not recommend you run the search services on the same server that is also hosting the distributed cache service. in the two server setup - you can't really avoid that, the 2nd setup however would accommodate that configuration.

The topology is very flexible - you can start with one setup and move to another at any time.