Question on MOSS Search/SQL CPU behavior

[g3]

We have a MOSS portal of two WFE/Query + 1 Index + SQL Cluster with 300K documents sizing 200 GB.

1. When we do a search on metadata keywords like "Title:XYZ" we get instant results without SQL server being taxed.

2. When we do a freetext search on words like "office" which is present across 100K+ documents; we see the response time is slower and high SQL CPU utilization.

3. When we do a freetext search on words like "SOX" which is present in 10 or less documents; we get instant results without SQL server being taxed.

Can someone explain/point me the search behavior of when it renders results from WFE/Query Server and at what point it goes to SQL for rendering results.

Thanks in Advance.

[Jay Mueller]

You may want to take a look at this article to see if it gives you more information.

Estimate performance and capacity requirements for search environments

technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262574.aspx

[g3]

Thanks Jay!!!