Error: The search request is unable to connect to the search service

Applies To: Office SharePoint Server 2007

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Topic Last Modified: 2008-04-30

After you apply Service Pack 1 (SP1), search queries that normally took fewer than five seconds to complete might be slower or time out, and the system displays the following error message: The search request is unable to connect to the search service.

Cause

This error may indicate that you do not have enough disk space on your query server. If adequate disk space is not available, your query servers will slow down or stop.

Resolution

Add disk space to your query server. This issue occurs because the method used to merge indexes has been changed in SP1 to improve performance and reduce server downtime. However, this change increases the disk space that is required to perform a master merge. Previous to SP1, a minimum of twice the physical size of the index was required. With SP1, the minimum disk space requirement on a query server or index server is 2.85 times the physical size of the index.

See Also

Concepts

Estimate performance and capacity requirements for search environments