Dedicated Crawl WFE in SP 2013 - How to do it?

Question

Hi,
We want to implement a dedicated WFE server in SP 2013 to handle all crawl traffic/requests but can't get it to work. Anyone have done this
on SP 2013?
First we thought that it would be as easy as just add an entry in the .host file of the server(s) that are hosting the crawl components but that didn't work.
Secondly we tried to extend all of the SharePoint Web applications and to map the server specific URL (http://server123)
but that gave us problems with Office documents, all search results was pointing to the extended URL (http://server123).
Finally we checked out to use Request Management but as Spence Harbar says, "Request Management only really works with Host Named Site Collections".
So now we need some help.
There are many blogs and articles on SP 2010 out there but none of them works on SP 2013. No matter what we do crawl traffic is always sent to all WFE's via the Load Balancer (hardware
Cisco).
Anyone?
Cheers,
CJ

Answer 1

Hi,
you can follow below powershell command:
$listOfUri = new-object System.Collections.Generic.List[System.Uri](1)
$zoneUrl = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUrlZone]'Default'
$webAppUrl = "<Default Zone FQDN URL>"
$webApp = Get-SPWebApplication -Identity $webAppUrl
$webApp.SiteDataServers.Remove($zoneUrl)   ## By default this has no items to remove
$URLOfDedicatedMachine = New-Object System.Uri("<Dedicated crawl target URL>")
$listOfUri.Add($URLOfDedicatedMachine);
$webApp.SiteDataServers.Add($zoneUrl, $listOfUri);
$WebApp.Update()
Also you can take help from article:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd335962(v=office.14).aspx