How to move data to solr production instance without re-indexing?

Question

We have an offline system where we consume input documents from external sources, transform them and store them in solr, one collection at a time.

There is a production solr instance with a different configuration than the offline solr instance (but with the same version of solr) that the data needs to be moved to once it is ready. This is set to run periodically and everytime there is new incoming data, it will replace the documents of a collection with the same name and schema in the production instance.

Is it in any way possible to do this without having to re-index the collection in the production instance? Is there some sort of back-up and restore mechanism that will allow us to copy the data, index and all, into the production system with minimal downtime?

Answer 1

You can try making backup on one system, and a restore on the other system:

Backup:

http://localhost:8983/solr/your-collection-name/replication?command=backup&location=d:\\solr-backup

Restore:

http://localhost:8983/solr/your-collection-name/replication?command=restore&location=d:\\solr-backup

Change localhost:8983 to your server's name and port (backup on one, restore on the other), your-collection-name to your core-name, d:\\solr-backup is the folder on the server, where the backups will be located in (make sure, you copy the backup-data from one server to the other).

See also the solr wiki.