• Article

Detected indexing backlog on search catalog

 

Applies to: Operations Manager Management Pack for Exchange 2010

Topic Last Modified: 2012-02-17

The Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Management Pack for System Center Operations Manager monitors the Windows Application log on computers running Exchange 2010 and generates this alert when the events specified in the following Details table are logged.

To learn more about this alert, in Operations Manager, do one or more of the following:

  • From the Operations Console, double-click this alert, and then click the General tab. Review the description of the alert that includes the variables specific to your environment.

  • From the Operations Console, double-click this alert, and then click the Alert Context tab. Review the logged events that meet the criteria of this Operations Manager alert.

Details

Product Name

Exchange

Product Version

14.0 (Exchange 2010)

Event ID

^(5604|5003)$

Event Source

CI Troubleshooter

Category

KHI

Alert Type

Error

Rule Path

Microsoft Exchange Server/Exchange 2010/Mailbox/Database Search Copy

Rule Name

Detected indexing backlog on search catalog.

Explanation

This Warning event indicates that a performance or corruption issue may affect the content indexing catalogs on a passive mailbox database copy in a particular Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 database availability group (DAG).

The four main components of Content Indexing are Store.exe, MSExchangeSearch, MS Search, and MS Search Filter Daemon. These components work together by using Named Pipes, shared memory, and COM/RPC to build the index catalogs and to respond to client queries.

User Action

To resolve this error, do one or more of the following:

  • Review the Application log and System log on your Exchange 2010 servers for related events. For example, events that occur immediately before and after this event may provide more information about the root cause of this error.

  • Review the Operations Console in Operations Manager for detailed information about the cause of this problem. For more information, see the "Introduction" section in this article.

  • Run the Troubleshoot-CI.ps1 PowerShell script to determine whether an issue affects content indexing on the server. This script is located in the Scripts folder under the Exchange installation folder. In this scenario, check for the following items:

    • Corruption: This is indicated by a Catalog Health error code of CatalogNeedReset.

    • Stalled indexing: This is indicated by a The Time Since the Last Notification was indexed value of more than two hours.

    • Deadlock issues: This is indicated by a CatalogHealth time stamp that is more than two hours old for each catalog entry.

    • Backlogged indexing: This is indicated when the Age of the Last Notification Indexed counter is more than 48 hours old.

  • For deadlock issues and for stalled indexing issues, restart the MS Search (Exchange) and Microsoft Exchange Search Indexer services.

  • For corruption issues, reset the search index, and then reseed the indexing catalog. To do this, follow these steps:

    1. Start the Exchange Management Shell, and then run the cd $exscripts command to change to the Scripts directory.

    2. Run the ResetSearchIndex.ps1 script together with the name of the Exchange mailbox database. For example, run the .\ResetSearchIndex.ps1 DB1 database. The following message is displayed.

      WARNING: Waiting for service 'Microsoft Exchange Search Indexer (MSExchangeSearch)' to finish stopping...

      MSExchangeSearchService stopped

      Deleting catalog for DB1

      Removing: C:\ProgramFiles\Microsoft\ExchangeServer\V14\Mailbox\DBX1\CatalogData-<GUID>

      Control-C to quit or Enter to continue:

      MSExchangeSearchService Started.

    3. Allow sufficient time for the new search catalog to become up-to-date. To determine whether the catalog is up-to-date, examine the value of the Full Crawl Mode Status performance counter. This counter is located in the MSExchange Search Indices performance object. When you configure this counter, select the database on which the catalog has been created. While the database is being crawled, Full Crawl Mode Status has a value of 1. When the full crawl has finished successfully, Full Crawl Mode Status has a value of 0 (zero).

    4. To reseed the search catalog on other DAG members that host a copy of the affected database, use the following command:

       Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identity DB1\MBX1 MBX2 -CatalogOnly

      For more information, see Update a Mailbox Database Copy.

  • Examine the current replication status for each replica database. To do this, use the Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus cmdlet. This cmdlet returns information about all copies of a particular database, information about a specific copy of a database on a specific server, or information about all database copies on a server.

For more information, see the following topics in Exchange 2010 Help:

For More Information

If you are not already doing so, consider running the Exchange tools, which have been created to help you analyze and troubleshoot your Exchange environment. These tools can help make sure that your configuration aligns with Microsoft best practices. They can also help you identify and resolve performance issues and improve mail flow. To run these tools, go to the Toolbox node of the Exchange Management Console. To learn more about these tools, see Managing Tools in the Toolbox.