[SOLR-3504] Clearly document the limit for the maximum number of documents in a single index

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 3.6
• Fix Version/s: 7.2, 8.0
• Component/s: documentation, update
• Assignee: Cassandra Targett
• Reporter: Jack Krupansky
• Created: 03/Jun/12 21:36
• Updated: 22/Dec/17 08:32
• Resolved: 09/Nov/17 20:13

Description

Although the actual limit to the number of documents supported by a Solr implementation depends on the number of shards, unless the user is intimately familiar with the implementation of Lucene, they may not realize that a single Solr index (single shard, single core) is limited to approximately 2.14 billion documents regardless of their processing power or memory. This limit should be clearly documented for the Solr user.

Granted, users should be strongly discouraged from attempting to create a single, unsharded index of that size, but they certainly should have to find out about the Lucene limit by accident.

A subsequent issue will recommend that Solr detect and appropriately report to the user when and if this limit is hit.