Google Cloud Storage (GCS) V2 - Lucidworks documentation

Latest version: v2.1.0
Compatible with Fusion version: 5.2.0 and later

GCS connector can index:

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Features

Service account authentication
Full crawl of storage buckets and objects
Recrawl buckets and objects
Remove deleted objects
Update objects
Cascade deletion of objects in deleted buckets
Document parsing support
Bucket and object filtering

Prerequisites

Perform these prerequisites to ensure the connector can reliably access, crawl, and index your data. Proper setup helps avoid configuration or permission errors, so use the following guidelines to keep your content available for discovery and search in Fusion.

Set up a Google Cloud project with access to the target GCS bucket.
- Enable the Google Cloud Storage API.
Create a service account with appropriate permissions:
- The minimum permissions are storage.objects.list and storage.objects.get.
- For bucket metadata access, also add the permission storage.buckets.get.
Download a JSON key file for that service account to use in the connector authentication properties in Fusion.

Confirm network connectivity:

Fusion must have outbound internet access to reach https://storage.googleapis.com.
If you are using a proxy or VPC, make sure traffic to GCS is permitted.

Remote-connector setup if running as an on-prem process:

A Fusion user with the remote-connectors or admin role for gRPC authentication.
The connector-plugin-standalone.jar alongside the plugin ZIP on the remote host.
A configured connector backend gRPC endpoint (hostname:port) in your YAML.
If the remote host doesn’t trust Fusion’s TLS cert, point to a truststore file path in your config.

Authentication

Setting up the correct authentication according to your organization’s data governance policies helps keep sensitive data secure while allowing authorized indexing. The connector uses Google Cloud service account credentials to access buckets through JSON key authentication. The service account must have storage.objects.list and storage.objects.get permissions and the full JSON key content must be copied and pasted into the service account JSON key box. You can restrict the service account from accessing content you don’t want indexed using IAM roles or signed URLs. Create a service account in Google Cloud and authenticate the GCS V2 Connector:

Go to the Google Cloud Console and navigate to IAM & Admin > Service Accounts.
Click Create Service Account.
1. Give the service account a name such as fusion-gcs-crawler.
2. Grant the service account roles/storage.objectViewer or use custom roles with storage.objects.list and storage.objects.get.
Click Create Key and choose JSON. Download the JSON key file to paste the key’s value in Fusion under Authentication Settings.
Verify access and bucket permissions to ensure:
- The service account has access to the buckets and objects you’re trying to crawl.
- The service account is authorized in the GCS project to access the buckets.

Crawl specific buckets

If the account used has limited permissions, or to only crawl specific buckets, use the Specify buckets to crawl setting. Add the name of the buckets you would like to crawl to download bucket objects and metadata only for those buckets.

Recrawl

The GCS V2 connector updates the Solr index with any content changes since the previous crawl for items added, updated, or deleted.

Remote connectors

V2 connectors support running remotely in Fusion versions 5.7.1 and later.

Configure remote V2 connectors

If you need to index data from behind a firewall, you can configure a V2 connector to run remotely on-premises using TLS-enabled gRPC.

Prerequisites

Before you can set up an on-prem V2 connector, you must configure the egress from your network to allow HTTP/2 communication into the Fusion cloud. You can use a forward proxy server to act as an intermediary between the connector and Fusion.The following is required to run V2 connectors remotely:

The plugin zip file and the connector-plugin-standalone JAR.
A configured connector backend gRPC endpoint.
Username and password of a user with a remote-connectors or admin role.
If the host where the remote connector is running is not configured to trust the server’s TLS certificate, you must configure the file path of the trust certificate collection.

If your version of Fusion doesn’t have the remote-connectors role by default, you can create one. No API or UI permissions are required for the role.

Connector compatibility

Only V2 connectors are able to run remotely on-premises. You also need the remote connector client JAR file that matches your Fusion version. You can download the latest files at V2 Connectors Downloads.

Whenever you upgrade Fusion, you must also update your remote connectors to match the new version of Fusion.

The gRPC connector backend is not supported in Fusion environments deployed on AWS.

System requirements

The following is required for the on-prem host of the remote connector:

(Fusion 5.9.0-5.9.10) JVM version 11
(Fusion 5.9.11) JVM version 17
Minimum of 2 CPUs
4GB Memory

Note that memory requirements depend on the number and size of ingested documents.

Enable backend ingress

In your values.yaml file, configure this section as needed:

ingress:
  enabled: false
  pathtype: "Prefix"
  path: "/"
  #host: "ingress.example.com"
  ingressClassName: "nginx"   # Fusion 5.9.6 only
  tls:
    enabled: false
    certificateArn: ""
    # Enable the annotations field to override the default annotations
    #annotations: ""

Set enabled to true to enable the backend ingress.
Set pathtype to Prefix or Exact.
Set path to the path where the backend will be available.
Set host to the host where the backend will be available.
In Fusion 5.9.6 only, you can set ingressClassName to one of the following:
- nginx for Nginx Ingress Controller
- alb for AWS Application Load Balancer (ALB)
Configure TLS and certificates according to your CA’s procedures and policies.
TLS must be enabled in order to use AWS ALB for ingress.

Connector configuration example

kafka-bridge:
  target: mynamespace-connectors-backend.lucidworkstest.com:443 # mandatory
  plain-text: false # optional, false by default.  
    proxy-server: # optional - needed when a forward proxy server is used to provide outbound access to the standalone connector
    host: host
    port: some-port
    user: user # optional
    password: password # optional
  trust: # optional - needed when the client's system doesn't trust the server's certificate
    cert-collection-filepath: path1

proxy: # mandatory fusion-proxy
  user: admin
  password: password123
  url: https://fusiontest.com/ # needed only when the connector plugin requires blob store access

plugin: # mandatory
  path: ./fs.zip
  type: #optional - the suffix is added to the connector id
    suffix: remote

Minimal example

kafka-bridge:
  target: mynamespace-connectors-backend.lucidworkstest.com:443

proxy:
  user: admin
  password: "password123"

plugin:
  path: ./testplugin.zip

Logback XML configuration file example

<configuration>
    <appender name="CONSOLE" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
        <encoder class="com.lucidworks.logging.logback.classic.LucidworksPatternLayoutEncoder">
            <pattern>%d - %-5p [%t:%C{3.}@%L] - %m{nolookups}%n</pattern>
            <charset>utf8</charset>
        </encoder>
    </appender>

    <appender name="FILE" class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.RollingFileAppender">
        <file>${LOGDIR:-.}/connector.log</file>
        <rollingPolicy class="ch.qos.logback.core.rolling.SizeAndTimeBasedRollingPolicy">
            <!-- rollover daily -->
            <fileNamePattern>${LOGDIR:-.}/connector-%d{yyyy-MM-dd}.%i.log.gz</fileNamePattern>
            <maxFileSize>50MB</maxFileSize>
            <totalSizeCap>10GB</totalSizeCap>
        </rollingPolicy>
        <encoder class="com.lucidworks.logging.logback.classic.LucidworksPatternLayoutEncoder">
            <pattern>%d - %-5p [%t:%C{3.}@%L] - %m{nolookups}%n</pattern>
            <charset>utf8</charset>
        </encoder>
    </appender>

    <root level="INFO">
        <appender-ref ref="CONSOLE"/>
        <appender-ref ref="FILE"/>
    </root>
</configuration>

Run the remote connector

java [-Dlogging.config=[LOGBACK_XML_FILE]] \
  -jar connector-plugin-client-standalone.jar [YAML_CONFIG_FILE]

The logging.config property is optional. If not set, logging messages are sent to the console.

Test communication

You can run the connector in communication testing mode. This mode tests the communication with the backend without running the plugin, reports the result, and exits.

java -Dstandalone.connector.connectivity.test=true -jar connector-plugin-client-standalone.jar [YAML_CONFIG_FILE]

Encryption

In a deployment, communication to the connector’s backend server is encrypted using TLS. You should only run this configuration without TLS in a testing scenario. To disable TLS, set plain-text to true.

Egress and proxy server configuration

One of the methods you can use to allow outbound communication from behind a firewall is a proxy server. You can configure a proxy server to allow certain communication traffic while blocking unauthorized communication. If you use a proxy server at the site where the connector is running, you must configure the following properties:

Host. The hosts where the proxy server is running.
Port. The port the proxy server is listening to for communication requests.
Credentials. Optional proxy server user and password.

When you configure egress, it is important to disable any connection or activity timeouts because the connector uses long running gRPC calls.

Password encryption

If you use a login name and password in your configuration, run the following utility to encrypt the password:

Enter a user name and password in the connector configuration YAML.

Run the standalone JAR with this property:

-Dstandalone.connector.encrypt.password=true

Retrieve the encrypted passwords from the log that is created.
Replace the clear password in the configuration YAML with the encrypted password.

Connector restart (5.7 and earlier)

The connector will shut down automatically whenever the connection to the server is disrupted, to prevent it from getting into a bad state. Communication disruption can happen, for example, when the server running in the connectors-backend pod shuts down and is replaced by a new pod. Once the connector shuts down, connector configuration and job execution are disabled. To prevent that from happening, you should restart the connector as soon as possible.You can use Linux scripts and utilities to restart the connector automatically, such as Monit.

Recoverable bridge (5.8 and later)

If communication to the remote connector is disrupted, the connector will try to recover communication and gRPC calls. By default, six attempts will be made to recover each gRPC call. The number of attempts can be configured with the max-grpc-retries bridge parameters.

Job expiration duration (5.9.5 only)

The timeout value for irresponsive backend jobs can be configured with the job-expiration-duration-seconds parameter. The default value is 120 seconds.

Use the remote connector

Once the connector is running, it is available in the Datasources dropdown. If the standalone connector terminates, it disappears from the list of available connectors. Once it is re-run, it is available again and configured connector instances will not get lost.

Enable asynchronous parsing (5.9 and later)

To separate document crawling from document parsing, enable Tika Asynchronous Parsing on remote V2 connectors.

Below is an example configuration showing how to specify the file system to index under the connector-plugins entry in your values.yaml file:

additionalVolumes:
- name: fusion-data1-pvc
    persistentVolumeClaim:
    claimName: fusion-data1-pvc
- name: fusion-data2-pvc
    persistentVolumeClaim:
    claimName: fusion-data2-pvc
additionalVolumeMounts:
- name: fusion-data1-pvc
    mountPath: "/connector/data1"
- name: fusion-data2-pvc
    mountPath: "/connector/data2"

You may also need to specify the user that is authorized to access the file system, as in this example:

securityContext:
    fsGroup: 1002100000
    runAsUser: 1002100000

Configuration

Name	Title	Description
`authenticationProperties`	Authentication settings	Connect to the bucket store using a service account. The service account requires the following permissions: storage.buckets.list to crawl all the available buckets; storage.objects.list and storage.objects.get to access to the objects in the buckets.
`applicationProperties`	Limit documents	Bucket and Object filtering options.
`jsonKey`	Service account Json key	Json key contents from authorized service account.
`buckets`	Bucket list	Add the bucket names to crawl. Leave blank to crawl all the available buckets.
`includedFileExtensions`	Included file extensions	Set of file extensions to be fetched. If specified all non-matching files will be skipped.
`excludedFileExtensions`	Excluded file extensions	A set of all file extensions to be skipped from the fetch.
`inclusiveRegexes`	Inclusive regexes	Regular expressions for bucket or object name patterns to include. This will limit this datasource to only items that match the regular expression.
`exclusiveRegexes`	Exclusive regexes	Regular expressions for bucket or object name patterns to exclude. This will limit this datasource to only items that do not match the regular expression.
`maxSizeBytes`	Maximum File Size	Used for excluding objects when the objects size is larger than the configured value.
`minSizeBytes`	Minimum File Size	Used for excluding objects when the objects size is smaller than the configured value.
`bucketPrefix`	Bucket prefix	Filter results to buckets whose names begin with this prefix. Useful only when ‘Bucket List’ property is empty.
`blobsPrefix`	Object prefix	Filter results to objects whose names begin with this prefix.
`pageSize`	Buckets and Objects page size	Maximum number of buckets or objects returned per page.

Fusion Connectors

​Features

​Prerequisites

​Authentication

​Crawl specific buckets

​Recrawl

​Remote connectors

​Prerequisites

​Connector compatibility

​System requirements

​Enable backend ingress

​Connector configuration example

​Minimal example

​Logback XML configuration file example

​Run the remote connector

​Test communication

​Encryption

​Egress and proxy server configuration

​Password encryption

​Connector restart (5.7 and earlier)

​Recoverable bridge (5.8 and later)

​Job expiration duration (5.9.5 only)

​Use the remote connector

​Enable asynchronous parsing (5.9 and later)

​Configuration

Features

Prerequisites

Authentication

Crawl specific buckets

Recrawl

Remote connectors

Prerequisites

Connector compatibility

System requirements

Enable backend ingress

Connector configuration example

Minimal example

Logback XML configuration file example

Run the remote connector

Test communication

Encryption

Egress and proxy server configuration

Password encryption

Connector restart (5.7 and earlier)

Recoverable bridge (5.8 and later)

Job expiration duration (5.9.5 only)

Use the remote connector

Enable asynchronous parsing (5.9 and later)

Configuration