To many, it would appear that the Google Mini appliance at $3,000 offers many of the same features as the Google Search Appliance but at about a tenth of the cost. Be forewarned: The Mini is limited in some pretty important areas.

The first difference lies in what Mini can index. The device is limited to only 100,000 documents. In terms of crawling, the Mini uses the same Google algorithm as its big brother and can index the same 220 file types. However, the Mini is not able to negotiate nearly as many authentication schemes as the Google Search Appliance. The Mini is limited to Basic Authentication and NT LAN Manager, so it might not be adequate for some intranet duties. It has no database integration or feed support.

Also, the Mini does not support numerous collections. Instead, it supports sub-collections, which do not easily provide for different result pages. Results with subcollections are calculated differently from using collections under the Google Search Appliance. However, during testing we didn't find the results to be tremendously different, though this might vary depending on the document set you use and the degree of overlap of terms and content.

The Mini is not a terribly fast or fault-tolerant appliance. The device handles roughly one query per second, and you don't get a fault-tolerant RAID array. The Mini's snazzy blue paint job doesn't hide what appears to be a stock 1U clone complete with a CD-ROM drive blocked by its faceplate. Like its big brother, we see fun hardware polish problems, such as the lack of a visible light on the front of the device to indicate the Mini is on.

Finally, the Mini also lacks most of the administration features of its more powerful sibling, including SNMP monitoring and health and performance logging.

However, for all its differences, you'll find the Mini to be similar to the Google Search Appliance. The device provides much the same degree of customization, including KeyMatch, custom output formats, Synonyms, and search result reporting.

Given its limitations the Mini is a likely candidate for public sites and basic intranets. At the price, you can hardly buy a rack-mounted server let alone get a nice turnkey search facility. Even as a proof-of-concept project, the Mini might stand an evaluation by organizations looking to experiment with improved search, and it provides a great introduction to the technology you will find in the more powerful Google Search Appliance.

Originally published on Network World, Published: August 1, 2005.