Adding Enterprise-wide Search with the Google Search Appliance

The Google Mini can handle searches for up to 300,000 documents. If your corporate storehouse is bigger than that, it's time to turn to the Google Search Appliance.

The basic Google Search Appliance, shown in Figure 38.2, can search up to 500,000 corporate documents; larger versions can search literally tens of millions of documents. Like the Google Mini, the Google Search Appliance is an integrated hardware and software solution; install the hardware, and then let the built-in software crawl your network's content (including all connected servers, databases, and content management systems) to create a master index of documents. The master index is then searchable by any employee, using either the Google Toolbar for Enterprise or Google Desktop for Enterprise; security features ensure that users can access only that information they have permission to view.

Figure 38.2. The Google Search Appliance (GB-1001).

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The base version of the GB-1001 Google Search Appliance costs $30,000 and can search up to 500,000 documents; an upgraded version that can search 1,000,000 documents costs $50,000. Google also offers the larger GB-5005, which can search up to 5 million documents, and the GB-8008, which can search tens of millions of documents. Prices on the larger models are available by quote only. Learn more at www.google.com/enterprise/gsa/.