SharePoint Portal Server 2003 supports a maximum of four search servers and four index servers

When you create a large server farm in Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, you may experience the following symptoms:

• When you configure the fifth search server, you receive the following error message:
  Too many servers are running the search component. You currently have 5, but SharePoint Portal Server only supports up to 4.
  The Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide contains the following information:
  It is recommended that you have no more than four search servers.
• When you configure the fifth index server, you receive the following error message:
  Too many servers are running the indexing/crawling component. You currently have 5, but SharePoint Portal Server only supports up to 4.
  The Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide contains the following information:
  It is recommended that you have no more than four index management servers.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section.

The error messages that are mentioned in the "Symptoms" section and the text from the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide contain conflicting information. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 supports a maximum of four search servers and four index servers.

You can dismiss the error messages that are mentioned in the "Symptoms" section and have more than four search servers or four index servers in the server farm. However, this configuration is not supported. Additionally, this configuration may not function correctly.