Load-balancing Solr instances

[Andrej van der Zee <an...@gmail.com>]

Hi,

Could someone please inform me about best practices when load-balancing
queries over Solr instances? We will have many shards each with multiple
replications.

I understand that sending my request to one particular Solr instance will
be routed appropriately, but requests will still be sent to this single
instance. This instance might be busy routing while it should serve his
core. Moreover, it might even go down.

Would it make sense to have multiple "dummy" Solr instances that only route
requests and do not serve any core, in order to minimize internal routing?

Or, would it be better to install a reverse proxy in front of the Solr
Cloud? Moreover, would it make sense to update the load-balancer
dynamically watching Zookeeper, in order to minimize internal routing of
requests?

Thanks,
Andrej