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A portal site can have multiple content indexes. When you create the portal site, Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 automatically creates two indexes. One index is for portal site content, and the other index is for non-portal site content. For more information about indexes, see About Content Indexes.
By using SharePoint Portal Server, you can propagate indexes from the index management server to the search server (the server dedicated to processing user search queries). Propagation allows you to distribute your resources. You can limit the resource-intensive processes required to create indexes to the index management server. This allows SharePoint Portal Server to create extensive indexes without affecting the performance of the search server.
Propagation automatically occurs at the end of the indexing process. You might want to force propagation in a situation where indexing is paused, or where propagation fails for some reason, such as network problems.
When you expand your server farm by adding a new search server, you can force propagation to put the latest indexes on the new search server.
You can propagate up to four indexes from an index management server to each search (destination) server.
Important When propagating indexes from an index management server to a search server, the transmission may not be secure. It is recommended that you implement Internet Protocol Security (IPSec), an industry-defined set of standards that verifies, authenticates, and optionally encrypts data at the IP packet level. For more information about IPSec, see www.microsoft.com.