Search Indexes

Opencast comes with multiple search indexes which act both as a cache and as a fast way to perform full text searches on metadata. By default, the Solr search indexes are created automatically and no additional external software is required.

For OpenSearch/Elasticsearch, a separate installation is required since Opencast version 9.0. Opencast 12 added support both OpenSearch and Elasticsearch, with Opencast 14 now preferring OpenSearch by default. We are planning on deprecating Elasticsearch support with Opencast 15, and removing it with Opencast 16. New installs should use OpenSearch.

While this works well, all indexes can be deployed separately. This comes with the obvious drawback of a harder deployment but has also a few advantages like a smaller core system or being able to have some service redundancies which would not be possible otherwise.