3/27/2007

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Like BMW with its automotive Mini, Google thought outside the box when it introduced an engine of a completely different stripe. Packaged in a slim, rack-mountable chassis, this one lets you search for data within your own organization. And like that other Mini, Google has attracted devoted followers –- particularly, small businesses that yearn for big business search power at a more affordable price.

How Many Minis?

In early 2007, Google released the third generation of its turnkey search box. Building on the Mini’s claim to bundle enterprise functionality for a small business customer, the latest Mini adds several key features previously found in its bigger, pricier sibling, the Google Search Appliance.

As with earlier generations, pricing for the Google Mini begins at $1,995 with indexing up to 50,000 documents and a full year of support and hardware replacement coverage. The Mini does not require an ongoing annual subscription to remain functional, although an optional $995/year extension provides continued access to updates, support and hardware coverage. Note that you cannot extend support on a Mini if its earlier support contract has lapsed without renewal.

Google decided to leave the latest Mini's physical design well enough alone -– it remains a 1U-sized rack-mount box dressed in blue and branded by Google. While Google does not specify the particular hardware components inside the Mini, it runs a customized Linux operating system on what Google describes as “standard” Intel/PC hardware. Despite this, the Mini hardware is not customer-serviceable.

The Mini is designed to run without any display. Unless there is a serious error that needs diagnosing, you interact with the Mini entirely through a Web browser on your network.

Setting Up Mini

Consistent with its turnkey design, the Mini' setup is very straightforward, and Google provides clear instructions. Most organizations should be able to have the Mini up and indexing their data within minutes of unpacking. The box includes two Ethernet cables, one of which is a crossover cable needed only for initial setup. Using this cable, a secondary network jack built into the Mini and a temporary PC/portable, you configure its primary IP address and other network parameters for compatibility with your existing intranet.

The Mini is a server and, as such, relies on a powerful cooling fan to support operation 24/7. We noted that the previous Mini was surprisingly loud for such a small box, albeit a box that will likely reside in a dedicated server room. As promised, Google has updated the control software, allowing the cooling fan to automatically slow itself down as needed. The Mini is by no means silent, but its decibels have been tamed.

Crawling for Data

The Mini has two primary phases of operation -- indexing your data and processing search requests.

To build your index, the Mini will crawl documents available in locations that you configure. You can set the Mini’s crawler loose on any number of network-accessible paths. By defining inclusion and exclusion rules, the Mini can ignore or include specific file types – for example, ignoring all Excel documents and including all PDFs. The Mini is pre-configured with dozens of rules covering most organizations’ typical needs, which are easily changed when you setup the initial crawl.

The Mini can parse over 220 types of files, including HTML, PDF, Microsoft Office, Microsoft PowerPoint, WordPerfect, Lotus Domino, Lotus 1-2-3, compressed archives, all common e-mail formats and so on. Organizations should be careful, though, not to accidentally reveal sensitive information, particularly for Mini installations with public-facing search.

This latest generation Mini introduces two new features that can significantly enhance your index. New document-level security support allows the crawler to index data protected by HTTP Basic or NTLM v1/v2 authentication, as well as LDAP. When secure documents are indexed, they will only be accessible in search results to people who present the necessary credentials originally applied to that document. The Mini does not support any additional authentication systems, however. For that capability, customers should look to Google’s more expensive Search Appliance.

A major addition to the new Mini is the “OneBox for Enterprise,” previously limited to the Search Appliance product. OneBox is an API with included frameworks that allow the Mini to access information from a variety of enterprise data storage systems, such as Oracle, Netsuite, SAS and others.

Administrator-defined “triggers” tell Google’s search engine to activate an appropriate OneBox module, which relays the search query to the business application or database and presents results in the Google search interface.

The Mini crawler can be set to run continuously to catch new or changed data, or full crawls can be run on a periodic schedule. Full crawls ensure that all results are up-to-date but can take more time to process.

This article first appeared on Smallbusinesscomputing.com.

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