Does Xenforo uses Sphinx search?

[KatieH]

I know this is a nightmare for big forums when it comes to vb search function but what about Xenforo? Does Xenforo uses Sphinx search?

https://marketplace.digitalpoint.com/sphinx-search-for-vbulletin-4.870/item

 

[Liam W]

I know this is a nightmare for big forums when it comes to vb search function but what about Xenforo? Does Xenforo uses Sphinx search?

https://marketplace.digitalpoint.com/sphinx-search-for-vbulletin-4.870/item

xenForo has it's own official enhanced search addon based on elasticsearch.

 

[Amaury]

No, it uses Elastic Search.

 

[Paul B]

The official add-on is called XenForo Enhanced Search.

http://xenforo.com/help/enhanced-search/

 

[Moshe1010]

I miss Sphinx. It takes much less resources than the hungry, Java based, Elastic Search.

 

[Wildcat Media]

I miss Sphinx. It takes much less resources than the hungry, Java based, Elastic Search.

Agreed. Running Java does not excite me either, as there have been vulnerabilities in Java over time on various platforms.

I had asked to have help (or to fund) a true Sphinx add-on, but nobody has stepped up. We have the server resources to run Java and ElasticSearch with no issues, but compared to Sphinx, it uses far more resources (CPU cycles and memory). I just need to make the most of our hardware at all times, and the ES/Java combination is highly wasteful compared to Sphinx.

Not to say ElasticSearch itself doesn't have some nice features--it is highly configurable in ways that Sphinx is not. Definitely a trade-off.

 

[Moshe1010]

Well, @digitalpoint did it for vB, so maybe he's willing to do the same for xenForo. I guess he's quite happy with Elasticsearch, so I'm not sure if that would happen anytime soon.

 

[Wildcat Media]

I get that impression also. He did a LOT of custom work on his site, and if he'd used Sphinx rather than ES, he'd likely have offered up an add-on by now. I have to admit we're trying to get some funds together to be able to download some of those add-ons he is offering--many would be quite useful to us!

 

[digitalpoint]

Well, @digitalpoint did it for vB, so maybe he's willing to do the same for xenForo. I guess he's quite happy with Elasticsearch, so I'm not sure if that would happen anytime soon.

Yep... ElasticSearch is fine. We don't use a custom Sphinx search on our site.

We *did* extend XenForo's search though (new content types you can search and some other stuff)... https://marketplace.digitalpoint.com/digital-point-search.1772/item

 

[Moshe1010]

Yep... ElasticSearch is fine. We don't use a custom Sphinx search on our site.

We *did* extend XenForo's search though (new content types you can search and some other stuff)... https://marketplace.digitalpoint.com/digital-point-search.1772/item

Don't you feel that ES is super hungry compared to Sphinx?

 

[digitalpoint]

ElasticSearch definitely uses a little more memory... anywhere from 15-40% in my experience. But it also does some things better than Sphinx.

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/sphinx-search-engine.6447/page-6#post-476938

I still would prefer it to not be a Java app, but at the end of the day it works, and is just as fast (if not faster than Sphinx). Here are the stats from our ES setup:



12.5M queries it's served up with an average query time of 0.0013 seconds.

 

[Wildcat Media]

When I viewed "top" on the server, Sphinx was often in the list of 40 or so entries (that I could see--the rest scroll off the bottom), but never near the top. Memory usage was much more efficient since it was primarily disk-based, and still quite fast. I know the overhead of Java/ES is much higher, but our server can handle it for now.

Interesting though, while looking at "top". Even during peak hours yesterday, I noticed as usual that we might have two or three dozen httpd processes near the top (sorted by %CPU, which is the default). But mysqld always used to be at or near the top in the list, often using 50% or more of the CPU. With XF, now that things are tuned nicely and we run the database from a separate SSD, I don't even see mysqld when sorted by %CPU! (It currently uses 36% of available memory.) With vB, it was usually right on top. Now I just need to tweak a few more minor things and we should be doing quite well. We still don't exceed 4.00 server load (quad core CPU) even during peak hours.