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    I am having some issues with OWA search of email.   A little history:

    We had a power failure last weekend in our datacenter.  After everything was back up, I discovered you could search for message in OWA but you got no results and no errors.   I tried to do a rebuild the search indexes by doing:

    ResetSearchIndex.ps1 [-force] -all

    Well it couldn't stop the search service.   So I rebooted the server and ran it again, and this time it ran and did it's thing.   Now I was at least getting search results but was also getting a message about exchange search not available when searching in OWA.  I rebooted a few days later again, and well finally yesterday for me anyhow, I had no error and got search results.   However, the results were not up to date as it did not include message it should have from message sent since my last server reboot.   As an attempt to fix this, I did find and delete the search catalog directory associated with the database my mailbox is in.   Now I get the search error again on OWA.  I am assuming I will get that until the search index has initially finished for my database I am in?

    I have been looking at some of the different search catalog directories, and it appears for some search catalog directories , things are happening, but in other catalog directories, nothing is changing.   I went in and stopped search a few times and manually deleted some search catalog directories that looked like they were not updating but that doesn't seem to help as it creates the new directory when I restart the search service but nothing changes in the directory after that.

    I did look in event viewer and I saw a few messages that some of the databases finished the search crawl in the past few days but certainly not all of them.

    Do I maybe need to just let it sit for a few days and see if things settle down?   I feel like some of my databases are building their search indexes but I am curious why other databases do not appear be building the search indexes?

    Any ideas where go from here?  Or is it just a wait a few days and see.  We have between 4,000 and 5,000 mailboxes and I know our databases are not ideal as some are quite large and we also have some mailboxes that quite large too.   (that is a whole other issue for another time to clean up and address)

    Thanks,

    Saturday, October 29, 2011 5:33 PM

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    Hello,

     

    Please provide the detailed message in application log about the index status.

     

    To further confirm whether the mailbox database is indexed, let’s manually check if the CI files are available under:

     

    C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Mailbox\Mailbox Database GUID\CatalogData-GUID

     

    Thanks,

    Simon

    Monday, October 31, 2011 9:36 AM
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    From the sounds of it, they appear to be rebuilding, what version of Exch?
    Sukh
    Saturday, October 29, 2011 6:27 PM
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    Exchange 2007.  

    Because I haven't ever deal with this sort of issue before.  I am assuming it is normal that you get the search error in OWA until the database the mailbox belongs to finishes the index crawl?   

    My only concern is why are catalog directories belonging to some databases not changing at all?   Can it only update a few databases at a time? 

    Saturday, October 29, 2011 6:49 PM
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    Check in perfomon of the status of the index, they could still be in progress - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123701(EXCHG.80).aspx

     

    You can try deleting manaully and then moitor via Perfmon.

    Sukh
    Saturday, October 29, 2011 8:04 PM
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    Well I looked at perfmom and one thing of interest was an item called:

    Number of Mailboxes Left to Crawl:

    That number is very slowly coming down.   I assume until that reaches 0, search results may work for some and not for others?  And even it if appears to work, results may not be up to date?   Does that seem correct?   

    Saturday, October 29, 2011 8:55 PM
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    Number of Mailboxes Left to Crawl - If this is going down thenI would  wait for this.  This show how many mbx left for that database.  Check on each database.

    Yes

    Sukh
    Saturday, October 29, 2011 9:55 PM
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    Hello,

     

    Please provide the detailed message in application log about the index status.

     

    To further confirm whether the mailbox database is indexed, let’s manually check if the CI files are available under:

     

    C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V14\Mailbox\Mailbox Database GUID\CatalogData-GUID

     

    Thanks,

    Simon

    Monday, October 31, 2011 9:36 AM
    Moderator