Support of Solr 4 Adapter

We will discontinue support for Solr 4 as a search solution in Intershop Commerce Management by the end of 2021.

Since 2015, Solr 4 has been included as a search solution in Intershop Commerce Management. We have added SolrCloud support in 2017 and changed the internal standard from Solr 4 to SolrCloud 8 with ICM 7.10.16.6.

Due to security issues within this solution and discontinued support from Apache, we have decided to only support the current version SolrCloud 8. This includes not only many new features and bug fixes, but also a completely different setup.

Reasons for End of Maintenance

We have chosen this path for the following reasons:

• Most importantly, Apache does no longer support Solr 4. There have been no bug fix releases since 2014. Intershop can guarantee a functioning system with regard to ICM and the corresponding adapter version. However, bugs present in Solr 4 are not covered by Intershop support and will continue to be present in the systems.
  • Side note: Even version 7 (already Cloud version) is already EOL (end-of-life) and does not get any bug fixes anymore.
  • There are security issues in Solr 4.8.1.
• SolrCloud 8 contains the collected bug fixes and stabilization improvements from the last 6 years. Many issues that occurred with Solr 4 have been resolved with SolrCloud 8.
• SolrCloud itself provides more features than Solr 4. Some of them are integrated into the ICM Adapter and additional features can be added in projects as customizations.

What Does It Mean to Stay On Solr 4?

Following the discontinued support for Solr 4, Intershop will also discontinue the maintenance of the Solr 4 Adapter. This means:

• Minor bug fixes, as well as new features will no longer be included in the Solr 4 Adapter.
• For another 9 months (i.e. until end of December 2021) we will still fix major bugs in the Solr 4 Adapter.
• There will be no new releases of the Solr 4 Adapter after December 2021.
• Features, improvements and bug fixes are regularly included in the latest version of the SolrCloud Adapter (currently version 2).

What Does It Mean If I Run on SolrCloud 6.6+?

In this case Solr already runs in cloud mode. The greatest efforts have already been made.

Nevertheless, as mentioned above, Apache has already ended support for SolrCloud 7. The corresponding ICM adapter (SolrCloud Search Service Adapter 1) already reached its end of life and will be supported until July 2022.

For this case we also recommend a migration to SolrCloud 8.

Tips for Migration to SolrCloud 8

If you are still using Solr 4 in your ICM project, we recommend planning a migration to SolrCloud 8. This requires:

• Migration of Solr Server to SolrCloud:
  • For on-premise projects, this means you (or your implementation partner) have to set up a SolrCloud cluster yourself. Documentation is provided by Apache, see Solr Ref Guide 8.6 | Taking Solr to Production.
  • For Intershop Cloud Platform customers a SolrCloud cluster will be provided.
• Migration of the Solr Adapter:
  • Use the new SolrCloud Adapter instead of the previous Solr 4 Adapter.
  • Documentation can be found in the Knowledge Base:
    • Guide - Migration Solr4 to SolrCloud Adapter
    • Public Release Note - SolrCloud Search Service Adapter 2
• Optional: Migration of the Intershop Commerce Management:
  • When updating the Solr Adapter, an ICM migration might be useful or even necessary.