New Google Search Appliance Can Index Billions of Documents

A revamped software architecture for the Google Search Appliance (GSA) and a new high-end model of this enterprise search device lift its indexing capacity to billions of documents and make it easier to scale it up.

By Juan Carlos Perez
Tue, June 02, 2009

IDG News Service — A revamped software architecture for the Google Search Appliance (GSA) and a new high-end model of this enterprise search device lift its indexing capacity to billions of documents and make it easier to scale it up.

Version 6.0 of the GSA's software introduces a more flexible architecture that makes it easier to link the devices to increase the number of documents indexed.

Meanwhile, Google is introducing a new model, the GB-9009, which can index up to 30 million documents out of the box. Its minimum capacity is 15 million documents.

Google sells the Search Appliance as a hardware box loaded with enterprise search software designed to let companies index and retrieve the data in their corporate systems, such as applications, document management tools, databases, Web servers and files. The software is based on the technology the company uses in its Web search engines, like Google.com.

In an enterprise search market historically dominated by sophisticated products that are costly and difficult to implement and use, Google has tried to attract underserved customers with an aggressively priced, low- to mid-range product designed to be simple to install, maintain and use.

However, with this new architecture and capacity to scale up to billions of indexed documents, the Search Appliance seems to make its most serious attempt yet at competing for customers that need industrial-strength enterprise search.

The GB-9009 replaces the GB-8008, which, in order to scale to 30 million documents, Google had to hard-wire and preconfigure on 12 server nodes, said Nitin Mangtani, senior product manager of enterprise search at Google.

The GB-9009 is built on Dell's PowerEdge R710 platform, running Intel's Xeon 5500 Series processors. Unlike the other single-box Search Appliance models, the GB-9009 has two units: one for processing and one for storage.

In addition, Google is phasing out the entry-level GB-1001, which topped out at 3 million documents but could be stacked in configurations of either five or eight units, providing capacity for up to 10 million or 30 million documents, respectively. Previously, the GB-7007, which goes from 500,000 to 10 million documents, couldn't be stacked, but with the new 6.0 software, now it can, thus eliminating the need for the GB-1001.

Google will continue to support the 1001 and 8008 models.

While the GB-1001, GB-7007 and the GB-9009 run the new 6.0 software, the 8008 can't, so Google will work with 8008 customers so that they can migrate to the new architecture if they want to.

Although the GB-8008 isn't compatible with the 6.0 software, it's very simple to migrate its index and export its configuration to the GB-9009, Mangtani said.

1 2 next page »

You are here: Technology Topics » Data Center » News

Most Recent Data Center Stories

White Papers »

Delivering a Greener Data Center

This paper covers power utilization, intelligent power management and industry best practices for energy efficiency. Extreme Networks® takes a lifecycle approach to power efficiency, management and recycling, offering savings to our customers and promoting a greener world.

Enterprise Strategy Group: The Case for a New Data-centric DLP White Paper

With increasing data growth, comes increased need for data security. The existing DLP model, with a focus on compliance/enforcement is not sufficient as the data discovery and classification capabilities are not granular enough. Read this paper to find how you can efficiently and accurately manage your risk by rapidly inventorying and classifying your data and then developing remediation workflows that support business needs.

Data Loss by the Numbers

This paper breaks down attack sources into four categories: external, malicious insiders, accidental insiders, and unknown.

Data Loss Prevention Solution for Managing E-Discovery

The rapid growth of data and technology is creating challenges for organizations as this digital data is considered to be business communications and must be preserved according the same industry-specific regulations governing the retention and discovery of emails and more traditional forms of electronic communications. This paper examines the role that Data Loss Prevention ("DLP") technology can play in helping organizations address the challenges of locating information in response to electronic discovery.

Best Practices in Data Protection - Executive Summary

This research, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, focuses on issues relating to the use of data protection solutions such as endpoint encryption and data loss prevention within the workplace.

Business Centric DLP

This report, by Jon Oltsik from Enterprise Strategy Group, examines the need for a new business-centric approach to DLP in order to align business and security requirements.

Webcasts »

Customer Spotlight: How IPC The Hospitalist Company Implemented Oracle on VMware

Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.

Virtualizing Microsoft and Oracle on VMware vSphere: Benefits and Best Practices

Virtualizing business-critical applications is an essential step in your journey to the cloud. Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange and SharePoint, and Oracle applications, are often the backbone of business IT. The benefits of virtualizing these applications extend far beyond mere consolidation. Understanding how VMware improves quality of service and agility while reducing costs will help you make the case for taking virtualization to the next level in your company.

Architecting a Modern Approach to Data Management

Applications are changing - they're increasingly web-oriented, global in nature and run from multiple device types. Additionally, the volume of data is growing exponentially every year. How do you ensure your applications have fast, accurate, up-to-date information in this new world? Modern applications are data-intensive; delivering data the old way using monolithic databases isn't working. What's needed is a modern approach to data. One that scales-out as needed and delivers predictable high performance, but without sacrificing data consistency or integrity.

Solving the Data Challenge for Real-Time Awareness and Risk Assessment: Webcast

Real-time, global data updates have become a critical business requirement for financial-services firms. Overnight or hourly batch jobs can cause erroneous results and missed opportunities. New regulatory requirements dictate real-time reporting of liquidity; traders want access to real-time market and risk positions; and the time windows for relevancy of cross-selling and marketing opportunities are getting shorter. To deal with these issues and new requirements, firms need to be able to react quickly to changes in data. Quick reactions require near-instant access to data, risk analysis and deeper computational analysis for effective decision making. View this webcast to learn how to achieve real-time awareness by managing ever-increasing data volumes and transaction rates.

Introduction to Virtualization

This video webcast is designed to help those with little to no virtualization experience understand why virtualization and VMware are so important to driving down both capital and operational costs. The session will start with the introduction of the key concepts and technologies of virtualization, introduce the vSphere Hypervisor, and build up to an overview of VMware vSphere® 5, the world's most robust and complete virtualization platform. This session will also discuss new solutions such as the vSphere Storage Appliance and VMware GO that are making it easier than ever before to get started with virtualization.

How Klout Combines Big Data with Microsoft Business Intelligence to Measure Influence

Big Data-it has the potential of transforming a business. In the case of Klout, a social networking analytics site, big data is the heart of the business. Klout processes and analyzes billions of user data signals every day-from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and more. How do they do it? Gain valuable insights from David Mariani, vice president of engineering for Klout.

Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter