Propagating the HCL Commerce Search index with the repeater

You can use the indexprop utility to propagate the HCL Commerce search index. It sends an HTTP request to the search index repeater to start replicating with the staging search index. This process ensures that your catalog changes are populated into the HCL Commerce Search index in production.

The search index repeater is used as both a master and a subordinate for search replication.

It is used as a subordinate when replicating with the staging search index, where the staging search index is the master and the repeater is the subordinate acting as a backup of the search index for production. After the first replication is completed from staging, the repeater communicates the changes to its subordinate nodes that are in production.

The repeater then becomes the master, where all nodes from the search subordinates are configured to poll changes from the repeater on a regular preconfigured fixed-time interval. This time interval is defined in the solrconfig.xml file under replication.

Replicating between the repeater and all search subordinates in production can be automated, as the indexed data in the repeater always matches the indexed data in production. The search index repeater must be a subordinate to the staging search server and master to the production search server.

The following diagram illustrates the timing of events you must consider when indexing with staging propagation:

Refer to Propagating the search index for typical uses of the indexprop utility.