diff --git a/app/lib/describe_indexer.rb b/app/lib/describe_indexer.rb
index d95f442e..a9448303 100644
--- a/app/lib/describe_indexer.rb
+++ b/app/lib/describe_indexer.rb
@@ -39,20 +39,12 @@ def index
     end
   end
 
-  # Given a json document, return an XML string that contains
-  # the JSON blob as a CDATA element
+  # Converts the JSON payload to XML which is what Traject expects
   # @param [String] json
   # @return [String]
   def prep_for_indexing(json)
     parsed = JSON.parse(json)
-    xml = parsed.to_xml
-    doc = Nokogiri::XML(xml)
-    collection_node = doc.at('group')
-    cdata = Nokogiri::XML::CDATA.new(doc, json)
-    collection_node.add_next_sibling("<pdc_describe_json></pdc_describe_json>")
-    pdc_describe_json_node = doc.at('pdc_describe_json')
-    pdc_describe_json_node.add_child(cdata)
-    doc.to_s
+    parsed.to_xml
   end
 
   def index_one(json)
@@ -96,24 +88,35 @@ def perform_indexing
     urls_to_retry = []
     rss_url_list.each do |url|
       process_url(url)
-    rescue
+    rescue => ex
+      Rails.logger.warn "Indexing: Error importing record from #{url}. Will retry. Exception: #{ex.message}"
       urls_to_retry << url
     end
 
     # retry an errored urls a second time and send error only if they don't work a second time
     urls_to_retry.each do |url|
+      Rails.logger.info "Indexing: Retrying record #{url}."
       process_url(url)
     rescue => ex
-      Rails.logger.warn "Error importing record from #{url}. Exception: #{ex.message}"
+      Rails.logger.error "Indexing: Error importing record from #{url}. Retry failed. Exception: #{ex.message}"
       Honeybadger.notify "Error importing record from #{url}. Exception: #{ex.message}"
     end
   end
 
   def process_url(url)
-    uri = URI.open(url, open_timeout: 30, read_timeout: 30)
+    # Bumping the timeout to 60 seconds because datasets with lots of files (e.g. more than 30K files)
+    # can take a while to be read (for example https://pdc-describe-prod.princeton.edu/describe/works/470.json)
+    start_read = Time.zone.now
+    uri = URI.open(url, open_timeout: 60, read_timeout: 60)
     resource_json = uri.read
+    elapsed_read = Time.zone.now - start_read
+
+    start_index = Time.zone.now
     resource_xml = prep_for_indexing(resource_json)
     traject_indexer.process(resource_xml)
-    Rails.logger.info "Successfully imported record from #{url}."
+    elapsed_index = Time.zone.now - start_index
+
+    timing_info = "(read: #{format('%.2f', elapsed_read)} s, index: #{format('%.2f', elapsed_index)} s)"
+    Rails.logger.info "Indexing: Successfully imported record from #{url}. #{timing_info} "
   end
 end
diff --git a/config/pdc_discovery.yml b/config/pdc_discovery.yml
index c2dc5a13..77c19140 100644
--- a/config/pdc_discovery.yml
+++ b/config/pdc_discovery.yml
@@ -25,5 +25,6 @@ production:
 
 staging:
   <<: *default
-  pdc_describe_rss: <%= ENV["PDC_DESCRIBE_RSS"] || "https://pdc-describe-staging.princeton.edu/describe/works.rss" %>
+  # Notice that we fetch production data for indexing since it is more realistic
+  pdc_describe_rss: <%= ENV["PDC_DESCRIBE_RSS"] || "https://pdc-describe-prod.princeton.edu/describe/works.rss" %>
   plausible_site_id: <%= "pdc-discovery-staging.princeton.edu" %>
diff --git a/config/schedule.rb b/config/schedule.rb
index 21d30e7e..44004928 100644
--- a/config/schedule.rb
+++ b/config/schedule.rb
@@ -28,7 +28,10 @@
 #   rake "index:research_data"
 # end
 
-# Rebuild index completely every 30 minutes while we're doing active data migration
-every 30.minutes, roles: [:reindex] do
+# Rebuild index completely every 60 minutes
+#
+# Bumped the schedule to 60 minutes since it's taking close to 30 minutes now that we are
+# indexing datasets with very large number of files.
+every 60.minutes, roles: [:reindex] do
   rake "index:research_data"
 end
diff --git a/config/traject/pdc_describe_indexing_config.rb b/config/traject/pdc_describe_indexing_config.rb
index 86c5555a..3e99b979 100644
--- a/config/traject/pdc_describe_indexing_config.rb
+++ b/config/traject/pdc_describe_indexing_config.rb
@@ -12,10 +12,26 @@
   provide 'solr.url', Indexing::SolrCloudHelper.collection_writer_url
   provide 'reader_class_name', 'Traject::NokogiriReader'
   provide 'solr_writer.commit_on_close', 'true'
+
+  # There are some parameters in Traject that allows us to configure values related
+  # to the Solr connection, in particular `batch_size` and the `thread_pool`. However,
+  # given that we are calling traject for each individual record (rather than for a
+  # batch of records) they might not apply to our scenario.
+  #
+  # The documentation is here in case we want to try them out:
+  # https://www.rubydoc.info/gems/traject/Traject/SolrJsonWriter
+
   provide 'repository', ENV['REPOSITORY_ID']
   provide 'logger', Logger.new($stderr, level: Logger::WARN)
 end
 
+# Converting the XML to JSON is a bit expensive therefore we make that conversion
+# only once per record and save it to the context so that we can re-use it.
+each_record do |record, context|
+  xml = record.xpath("/hash").first.to_xml
+  context.clipboard[:record_json] = Hash.from_xml(xml)["hash"].to_json
+end
+
 # ==================
 # Main fields
 
@@ -25,10 +41,8 @@
   accumulator.concat [munged_doi]
 end
 
-# the <pdc_describe_json> element contains a CDATA node with a JSON blob in it
-to_field 'pdc_describe_json_ss' do |record, accumulator, _c|
-  datacite = record.xpath("/hash/pdc_describe_json/text()").first.content
-  accumulator.concat [datacite]
+to_field 'pdc_describe_json_ss' do |_record, accumulator, context|
+  accumulator.concat [context.clipboard[:record_json]]
 end
 
 # Track the source of this record
@@ -99,21 +113,21 @@
 end
 
 # Extract the author data from the pdc_describe_json and save it on its own field as JSON
-to_field 'authors_json_ss' do |record, accumulator, _c|
-  pdc_json = record.xpath("/hash/pdc_describe_json/text()").first.content
+to_field 'authors_json_ss' do |_record, accumulator, context|
+  pdc_json = context.clipboard[:record_json]
   authors = JSON.parse(pdc_json).dig("resource", "creators") || []
   accumulator.concat [authors.to_json]
 end
 
-to_field 'authors_orcid_ssim' do |record, accumulator, _c|
-  pdc_json = record.xpath("/hash/pdc_describe_json/text()").first.content
+to_field 'authors_orcid_ssim' do |_record, accumulator, context|
+  pdc_json = context.clipboard[:record_json]
   authors_json = JSON.parse(pdc_json).dig("resource", "creators") || []
   orcids = authors_json.map { |author| Author.new(author).orcid }
   accumulator.concat orcids.compact.uniq
 end
 
-to_field 'authors_affiliation_ssim' do |record, accumulator, _c|
-  pdc_json = record.xpath("/hash/pdc_describe_json/text()").first.content
+to_field 'authors_affiliation_ssim' do |_record, accumulator, context|
+  pdc_json = context.clipboard[:record_json]
   authors_json = JSON.parse(pdc_json).dig("resource", "creators") || []
   affiliations = authors_json.map { |author| Author.new(author).affiliation_name }
   accumulator.concat affiliations.compact.uniq
@@ -223,6 +237,10 @@
 
 # ==================
 # Store files metadata as a single JSON string so that we can display detailed information for each of them.
+#
+# TODO: Note that this information is duplicated with what we save in `pdc_describe_json_ss`. For large
+# datasets (e.g. those with 60K files) this is less than ideal. We should look into optimizing
+# this when we take care of https://github.com/pulibrary/pdc_discovery/issues/738
 to_field 'files_ss' do |record, accumulator, _context|
   raw_doi = record.xpath("/hash/resource/doi/text()").to_s
   files = record.xpath("/hash/files/file").map do |file|