The search environment types are:
Indexing—Does the work of indexing your content. Each Search project has a single Indexing Environment, which can be distributed across multiple hosts. There is exactly one indexing environment per Search project.
Workbench—Used to load and test content with customization data in temporary indexes, which are not deployable. There is exactly one Workbench environment per project.
Staging—Demonstration and evaluation environment. A Web site might use the index on a staging Search Environment for demonstrations, early testing, or proof-of-concept purposes. A project can have any number of staging environments.
Production—Answers end-user queries using the deployed index. A project can have any number of production environments, which should be optimized for high availability and performance. These environments must be created manually.
You can modify environments by adding to or changing the list of host machines. ATG Search automatically distributes indexes to the hosts, creating as many instances as needed.
