Enterprise Data Archiving with Apache NiFi, Tika, Solr & Ozone

Why This Stack?

Most enterprise archiving tools are either too rigid (proprietary formats) or too loose (dump-and-forget cold storage). The goal was a pipeline that could:

• Ingest any document format (PDF, DOCX, emails, images)
• Extract structured content for search
• Index everything for full-text retrieval
• Store long-term with lifecycle policies

---

The Pipeline

Files / APIs / Databases
        │
        ▼
   Apache NiFi
   (Orchestration & routing)
        │
        ├──► Apache Tika
        │    (Content extraction)
        │
        ├──► Apache Solr
        │    (Full-text index)
        │
        └──► Apache Ozone
             (S3-compatible storage)

---

Apache NiFi, The Orchestrator

NiFi's visual dataflow makes it ideal for this kind of multi-sink pipeline. Key processors used:

• GetSFTP / ListS3, source connectors
• RouteOnAttribute, route by MIME type
• InvokeHTTP, call Tika REST API
• PutSolrRecord, index into Solr
• PutOzoneObject, store in Ozone

One underappreciated NiFi feature: back-pressure. When Solr is slow, NiFi automatically throttles ingestion rather than dropping records.

---

Content Extraction with Tika

Apache Tika handles 1,400+ file formats. Running it as a server:

java -jar tika-server-standard-2.9.0.jar --port 9998

Extract text and metadata via REST:

import requests

def extract(file_path: str) -> dict:
    with open(file_path, "rb") as f:
        meta = requests.put(
            "http://localhost:9998/meta/form",
            files={"upload": f},
        ).json()
        
    with open(file_path, "rb") as f:
        text = requests.put(
            "http://localhost:9998/tika",
            data=f,
            headers={"Accept": "text/plain"},
        ).text

    return {"metadata": meta, "content": text}

---

Solr Schema Design

For archiving, a flat schema with dynamic fields works well:

<field name="id" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="true"/>
<field name="content" type="text_general" indexed="true" stored="false"/>
<field name="title" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
<field name="created_at" type="pdate" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
<field name="file_type" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
<dynamicField name="meta_*" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true"/>

The content field is indexed but not stored, this saves significant disk space since the original file lives in Ozone.

---

Ozone for Long-Term Storage

Apache Ozone is HDFS's successor, an object store with an S3-compatible API. Lifecycle rules automatically transition objects to cheaper storage tiers after 90 days:

ozone sh bucket setlifecycle /vol/archive-bucket \
  --lifecycle '{"Rules":[{"Status":"Enabled","Transitions":[{"Days":90,"StorageClass":"GLACIER"}]}]}'

---

Lessons Learned

1. Tika memory usage spikes on large PDFs, run it in a container with memory limits.
2. Solr commit intervals, don't auto-commit per document; batch commits every 30s instead.
3. NiFi provenance is invaluable for debugging, turn it on even in prod.