It is common in large scale search deployments to separate (at least) raw search and content retrieval. The query types, volumes are very different in these different engines, so the number of shards are different as well. The problems of index deployment and management are the same, however.

This indicates that katta should have the following extensions:

• abstract out a small KattaMangeable interface to allow manageable instances to be managed
• extend the configuration to allow multiple pools to be managed
• extend the client software to allow different pools to be queried