Pricing and capabilities for medium sized solution

[Volker Hetzer]

Hi!
I'm not sure whether it's possible to say offhand but my boss asked me
to have a look at the google search appliance or google mini for our
department.
The functional requirements are like this:
- We'd like to index documents in two different domains (that is,
being authorized by two different domain controllers).
- We'd like to index part of a huge network share managed by the
company, that is, a directory structure within that, not the whole
share. There, network load during indexing may be an issue.
- If possible, and given consent, we'd like to index some local drives
on colleagues' pc's. (Windows)
- if possible, and given cconsent, we'd like to index exchange
mailboxes.

Would that be possible for google mini or google search appliance? In
paricular, the multi-domain requirement is important. The local drive
and email thing we can do without.

My second question is, what is a rough estimate of the external costs
for this? Basically,
- What is a "document" in the sense of google? I mean, if it indexes
all files, even on a c: drive on a normal pc we'd have well over a
million "documents".
- Is there a rough estimate on the costs? I've seen http://www.goebelgroup.com/sam.htm,
which gives estimates for google mini but not for google search
appliance. Right now I have no estimate on the number of "real"
documents but we are probably talking a low six digit number.

I'd thought I'd ask here first before I go to google marketing and
start a whole process and everything.

Lots of Greetings and Thanks in advance!
Volker

[Dave Watts]

> The functional requirements are like this:
> - We'd like to index documents in two different domains (that is,
> being authorized by two different domain controllers).

Both the GSA and the Mini can do this. But do you want to implement
secure search for your users? If so, you'll probably end up requiring
the GSA, as it'll let you collect multiple sets of credentials for a
single secure search. If, on the other hand, you just want your users
to be able to run a search without having the results filtered by
their credentials, either can do this.

> - We'd like to index part of a huge network share managed by the
> company, that is, a directory structure within that, not the whole
> share. There, network load during indexing may be an issue.

Both the GSA and the Mini can index SMB/CIFS. If you're using NFS,
you'll need the GSA - which doesn't directly support NFS, but can
through the use of a connector available from Google for free. If
you're using something else, neither appliance will support that.

> - If possible, and given consent, we'd like to index some local drives
> on colleagues' pc's. (Windows)

Both the GSA and the Mini can do this, using SMB shares. Neither the
GSA nor the Mini can do this especially easily, though - you'll have
to configure individual crawl patterns for each one. A better solution
might be to use Google Desktop for Enterprise, installed locally on
each machine. This will allow users to automatically index their own
machine, and simultaneously search that along with the GSA.

> - if possible, and given cconsent, we'd like to index exchange
> mailboxes.

Neither the GSA nor the Mini can do this out of the box. You'd need a
third-party connector for this, if one exists.

> My second question is, what is a rough estimate of the external costs
> for this? Basically,
> - What is a "document" in the sense of google? I mean, if it indexes
> all files, even on a c: drive on a normal pc we'd have well over a
> million "documents".

Each individual URL is a document. When indexing SMB, each file has a
pseudo-URL that looks like this:

smb://server/share/

> - Is there a rough estimate on the costs? I've seen http://www.goebelgroup.com/sam.htm,
> which gives estimates for google mini but not for google search
> appliance. Right now I have no estimate on the number of "real"
> documents but we are probably talking a low six digit number.

You will probably have to purchase the GSA, as the Mini's maximum
document count is pretty low. Beyond that, I don't really know the
pricing model that well, as I'm an implementer rather than a
salesperson, but I do know that it's based on the number of documents
you need to index. And, of course, people always underestimate that!

> I'd thought I'd ask here first before I go to google marketing and
> start a whole process and everything.

If you're interested, you can contact a reseller, who'll be happy to
give you any information you need. Fig Leaf Software is, of course, a
reseller - there are a bunch of folks on this list who also represent
resellers. If you're interested in having our salespeople giving you
more information, you can just send an email to goo...@figleaf.com -
that will also go to people like me who can answer questions like the
more technical ones you asked above. You don't have to worry about
starting a process, it can be as simple as you like.

Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software
http://www.figleaf.com/
http://training.figleaf.com/

Fig Leaf Software is a Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB) on
GSA Schedule, and provides the highest caliber vendor-authorized
instruction at our training centers, online, or onsite.

[Michael Cizmar]

A couple of points also between the GSA and Mini.  The Mini has very limited non english dictionary as well as weak support for internationalization and stemming.

I setup a configuration a few years ago where the client had two forests (not domains) and this was achieved through a custom SAML implementation...something as well that you can not do with the Mini.  Drop me a line privately at michael dot cizmar at mcplusa dot com and I can send you some links of tools that we use to determine document counts.  They are pretty crude.  The GSA has means by which you can limit the number of documents from a particular source so you could have some flexibility in what got crawled.

Both are also tunable to which files are indexed. 

Cheers,

Michael

[Volker Hetzer]

Hi!
Thanks a lot for your information!
Things are much clearer now.

Again, thanks!
Volker

[Volker Hetzer]

We are not that far yet but it looks like google mini is out of the race for now.

Thanks a lot!
Volker