Since search engines benefit heavily from caching, their JVM memory profiles are substantially different from those of a JVM focused on serving content and web views (e.g., a JVM running Liferay DXP). In production environments, search engines and Liferay DXP should therefore always be on separate JVMs.
The following sections provide a synopsis of Elasticsearch configurations. Prior to deployment, we strongly recommend reading Elastic’s documentation on production deployment.
You’ll learn how to configure these settings:
- JVM
- File System
- Scale
Read on to get Elasticsearch humming with Liferay DXP!
JVM
In general, you should allocate 45% of the available system memory to
Elasticsearch, up to a maximum of 31 GB. You should configure heap sizing by
setting the ES_HEAP_SIZE environment variable. Also, the JVM vendor and
version for the Elasticsearch server must be identical to those of the
Liferay DXP server.
File System
You should configure your OS for at least 64,000 file descriptors (the default Linux value is 1024). Elasticsearch also uses NioFS and MMapFS. You must therefore ensure there is sufficient virtual memory available for memory-mapped files. Consult your system administrator for information on how to configure these values.
Scaling Your Deployment
Proper scaling and tuning of an Elasticsearch cluster primarily depends on the type of indexes it holds and how they’re intended to be used. Since Liferay DXP is a flexible development platform, no two applications index and search for data in exactly the same way. Read the definitive Elasticsearch guide, and understand the differences between indexing-intensive applications and search-intensive applications. Then you’ll be able to predict usage patterns for your Liferay DXP indexes and design the optimally scaled and tuned cluster.
Always perform tests to ensure optimal configurations.