On 7.x

Starting from version 7.x, the Nosto integration module has changed the indexing mechanism. It now using only one indexer called Nosto Product (nosto_index_product) combined with a Bulk operations to build and send product data to Nosto. The module still supports caching within the bulk operations for improved performance.

To further optimise the process, the bulk operations can be configured to use message queues.

Manually Running the Indexer

You can run a full reindex of the product catalog by using Magento's built-in CLI indexer.

To reindex all products, re-run the indexer:

• nosto_index_product indexer

  bin/magento indexer:reset nosto_index_product
  bin/magento indexer:reindex nosto_index_product

Indexer Parallelisation

Starting with version 2.2.6 Magento supports parallel reindexing. Nosto's indexers support parallelization and both the Nosto indexers can be executed in parallel mode. The indexers are scoped based on stores. This means that if a merchant has n-stores, there will be n-processes running in parallel, each indexing a specific store (also called a "Dimension").

There are a few steps to be taken before enabling parallelisation:

Check the dimension mode for the indexer

bin/magento indexer:show-dimensions-mode
Product Price:                                     none
Nosto Product Indexer :                            none

Set the indexer mode to store

bin/magento indexer:set-dimensions-mode nosto_index_product store

Dimensions mode for indexer "Nosto Product Indexer" was changed from 'none' to 'store'

Make sure that the number of threads declared in the env variable MAGE_INDEXER_THREADS_COUNT is equal to the max number of stores.

For testing purposes, it can be declared in the CLI, like:

MAGE_INDEXER_THREADS_COUNT=3 php -f bin/magento indexer:reindex nosto_index_product

Nosto module uses Magento's Bulk Operations and Message Queues for rebuilding the product data, populating the product cache and synchronising the product data to Nosto over API. By default the message queues are backed by MySQL but Magento also supports using RabbitMQ for message queues.

Using Message Queues (RabbitMQ)

In order to make Nosto module to use RabbitMQ for message queue processing you need to override the message queue configuration files under Nosto module. You must define the value of connection attribute to be amqp instead of db to the following files. You might also want rename the exchange across the configurations files to something else than magento-db.

• etc/queue_consumer.xml

• etc/queue_publisher.xml

• etc/queue_topology.xml

We recommend also deleting the file queue.xml as it's only used when Message Queues are using MySQL.

After the configuration files have been overridden you must run bin/magento setup:upgrade.

For overriding the message queue configuration you can use for example Magento's patches.

Best Practices

We recommend the following best practices for Nosto indexers.

• We strongly advise that the indexer mode is set to Update by Schedule for better performance. This will also make the product updates to Nosto more reliable. For example, the scheduled catalog price rules would not be updated in real-time to Nosto unless the indexer mode is set to Update by Schedule

• If you have multiple store views, we recommend that you enable multi-dimensional indexing.

Troubleshoot

If you are having issues with indexing you want to first enable Magento's debug logging https://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.3/config-guide/cli/logging.html. This will enable more verbose logging for the indexing. You will find indexing related logs from debug log (debug.log by default). All log entries are prefixed with "nosto".‌

Indexer is not keeping up with product updates

‌If you are frequently updating massive amount of products (for example via API or import) there's a chance that the indexer cannot process the previous update before the next update batch is executed. In these cases we recommend parallelising the indexer as a first step.‌

We also recommend figuring out the source of frequent product updates and do optimisations for the mview subscriptions / triggers. For example if you are using 3rd party module / integration that updates all product images frequently but those images are not used for recommendations you might want to remove gallery related subscriptions. Modifying the mview.xml file can be done for example using Magento's patches.‌

Warning about innodb_buffer_pool_size

You will most likely see this warning in your Magento logs if you've installed MySQL using the defaults. To get rid of this warning we recommend increasing innodb_buffer_pool_size on you MySQL server configuration. You can find more info about indexer optimization from the official Magento documentation.‌

Products not synchronized to Nosto

If the product data is not synchronized to Nosto check the following steps:

1. The Product Updates via API flag is enabled. The flag can be found under Store > Settings > Configurations > Services > Nosto > Feature Flags. If disabled, please enable the flag

2. Set the Nosto Product Indexer mode to Update by Schedule.

3. Verify that the message queue consumers nosto_product_sync.update and nosto_product_sync.delete both are running. Magento cron should take care of running (and restarting if needed) the consumers automatically. The cron group name is consumers. For testing purposes, our consumers can be started by running bin/magento queue:consumers:start nosto_product_sync.update & or bin/magento queue:consumers:start nosto_product_sync.delete & (CAUTION! The process started by this command will not terminate and restart automatically)

4. Check that messages are being published. If your Magento 2 instance is using MySQL for MQ, the messages can be found in queue_message table.

5. Check that the messages are being consumed. Magento operation results can be found in magento_operation table. Check that magento_operation have entries where the topic is nosto_product_sync.update or nosto_product_sync.delete.

6. If you are using MySQL 8 or MariaDB > 10.2.3, you can use the following query to have better visibility on the products that are being sent to Nosto

• Show products that has been sent to Nosto for update

SELECT 
    CONVERT(op.bulk_uuid USING utf8) as uuid,
    JSON_EXTRACT(CONVERT(op.serialized_data USING utf8), "$.product_ids") as products,  
    JSON_LENGTH(JSON_EXTRACT(CONVERT(op.serialized_data USING utf8), "$.product_ids")) as product_count,
    op.status, 
    op.error_code,
    op.result_message,        
    bulk.start_time
FROM 
    magento2.magento_operation as op
JOIN 
    magento2.magento_bulk as bulk
ON
    op.bulk_uuid = bulk.uuid
WHERE 
    op.topic_name = "nosto_product_sync.update"

• Show products has been sent to Nosto to discontinue

SELECT 
    CONVERT(op.bulk_uuid USING utf8) as uuid,
    JSON_EXTRACT(CONVERT(op.serialized_data USING utf8), "$.product_ids") as products,  
    JSON_LENGTH(JSON_EXTRACT(CONVERT(op.serialized_data USING utf8), "$.product_ids")) as product_count,
    op.status, 
    op.error_code,
    op.result_message,        
    bulk.start_time
FROM 
    magento2.magento_operation as op
JOIN 
    magento2.magento_bulk as bulk
ON
    op.bulk_uuid = bulk.uuid
WHERE 
    op.topic_name = "nosto_product_sync.delete"

Bulk attribute updates not synchronized to Nosto

If you have the indexer running on mode "Update by save" the bulk operations are not automatically reflected to Nosto. This is due to how Magento processes bulk updates internally.‌

It is highly recommended to run all indexers in mode "Update by schedule".‌

Nosto indexer runs after Nosto module settings are changed ‌

This happens by design. When Nosto settings that affect Nosto product data are changed and indexers are defined to be run in mode "Update By Schedule" Nosto will automatically initialise a full reindex to keep the product data up to date.