SOLR supported search on an OpenStack metadata service

In cloud computing, the use of databases, particularly the MySQL database system, is a common practice. While the MySQL database system has advantages such as consistency and transaction support, some software architects believe that use of indexed search systems such as SOLR gives better read performance as compared to the traditionally deployed database servers. We propose an architecture that allows us to leverage the advantages of both systems. To study the same, we created a test bed with behavior similar to a real world scenario of a cloud metadata service, and compared the results of searching the metadata using a MySQL database with that of searching the same data using SOLR. We found that indexing the data using SOLR, although expensive in terms of disk space, gives us read performance orders of magnitude better than the MySQL database. These results may encourage cloud operators to try using SOLR for serving the users’ search requests, thereby avoiding API timeouts and slowness.