Provided are techniques for partitioning a physical index into one or more physical partitions; assigning each of the one or more physical partitions to a node in a cluster of nodes; for each received document, assigning an assigned-doc-ID comprising an integer document identifier; and, in response to assigning the assigned-doc-ID to a document, determining a cut-off of assignment of new documents to a current virtual-index-epoch comprising a first set of physical partitions and placing the new documents into a new virtual-index-epoch comprising a second set of physical partitions by inserting each new document to a specific one of the physical partitions in the second set using one or more functions that direct the placement based on one of the assigned-doc-id, a field value derived from a set of fields obtained from the document, and a combination of the assigned-doc-id and the field value.