The following discussion concerns how to manage the searching of different types of data, such as artists and releases from MusicBrainz. In the MusicBrainz configuration example, each document of each type gets their own index but they all share the same configuration. Although we wouldn't generally recommend it, this approach was done for convenience and to reduce the complexity for this book at the expense of a one-size-fits-all schema and configuration.
Tip
A Solr server hosts one or more Solr Cores. A Solr Core is an instance of Solr to include the configuration and index, sometimes the word "core" is used synonymously with "index". Even if you have one type of data to search for in an application, you might still use multiple cores (with the same configuration) and shard the data for scaling. Managing Solr Cores is discussed further in Chapter 11, Deployment.