[Samba] High cpu and I/O on Samba server when users perform search in windows explorer

[Mike]

Greetings,

Please let me know if this is not appropriate for the list.
There is no Samba error or malfunction to report.
I am looking for advice and guidance on how I might handle the
following situation:

I am running Samba as an AD DC (and file server) on one physical server.
One of the shares has about 1 million files consisting mostly of
.doc/.docx, .pdf, .xls/.xlsx, .jpg, and .png files in 1.2 TB of disk
space.

I have about 35 users and they often perform searches in this file
share directory via Windows Explorer on their windows clients.

It creates high cpu usage on the Samba AD DC and elevated i/o too.

Has anyone found/deployed/created an alternative search tool?  Sort of
like a simple CRUD database web app in which all the sub-directories
and file names have been indexed and placed in a database for quick
search and recall with a link to their saved location on the file
server?

Thank you for reading.