Blog

Migrate to Solr or Elasticsearch [or OpenSearch] with this Playbook

Hello again, dear readers.  A request came through to me recently about the “Search Engine Migration Circus” talk I gave for Haystack LIVE this past July.  I gave this talk for teams who need to know how to migrate to Solr or Elasticsearch.

The requester was wondering if they could have the playbook that I used during the talk.  So, as a celebration of openness, here it is! We use this when working with clients to make sure a migration is both successful itself, and more importantly, better for their business in the long-term.

The playbook itself has a good structure, but this is just a guide that we use while applying our expertise. We work closely with clients through all the details of getting the team running efficiently, capturing and interpreting the necessary data, prioritizing features, catching all the technical issues, and many many more details that come along with the herculean effort of a migration. We’ve done this dozens of times with clients of all shapes and sizes, and we know Solr and Elasticsearch very well. So get in touch if you’re starting the treacherous journey of moving your site search from one platform to another, whether you need to migrate to Solr or Elasticsearch from a commercial or open source search engine. [UPDATE: migrations to OpenSearch are also possible and the playbook will also apply!]

If you missed the talk itself, here is the video. Thanks for all the great feedback, and see you at the next Haystack LIVE!

If you need help with a search migration project, get in touch.