About Search Cluster Topology
Your search cluster is made up of one or more partitions,
each of which is made up of one or more nodes. As your search collection
becomes larger, the collection can be partitioned into smaller pieces
to facilitate more efficient access to the data. As the Search Service
becomes more heavily utilized, replicas of the existing partitions,
in the form of additional nodes, can be used to distribute the load.
Additional nodes also provide fault-tolerance; if a node becomes unavailable,
queries are automatically issued against the remaining nodes.
Note: If a partition becomes unavailable, the cluster will continue
to provide results; however, the results will be incomplete (and thus
indicated in the query response).
You manage the partitions and nodes in your search cluster on the
Topology Manager page of the Search Cluster Manager. You can perform
the following actions with the Topology Manager:
