Index Recovery Process should an Index Repair fail. (4238187)

Index Recovery Process should an Index Repair fail.

The repair process shouldn’t fail, but does take a long time to complete (sometimes even days and more), due to the nature of the repair and hardware used.

Here are the steps should an Index repair fail…

The Index repair function should not cause any real issues, but here is a detailed process on how to make a backup of the Index(es) and then how to restore it.

Backup and Run an Index Repair:
1] Inform users that searching will not be available within Archive Manager during the Index repair process.
2] Stop the Full Text Index (FTI) and Full Text Search (FTS) services – set to disabled so they don’t start.
3] Make a file level backup or copy of the Index directories and save them elsewhere (you can execute a “Select * from ftpartition” SQL query to find out where your Indexes reside).
4] Re-enable and start the FTI and FTS services.
5] Go to the Archive Manager WebUI | Administrator | Index Dashboard | Message Index and Attachment Index tabs | Request Operation sub tabs | Set the Repair option and click on Submit.

Index Restore if the Index Repair Fails:
1] If the repair fails for some unknown reason, then stop and disable the FTI and FTS services.
2] Restore the backed up index files to their original location.
3] Cancel all Repair tasks in the Archive Manager WebUI | Administrator | Index Operation Log | Click on the red X on the item under the Action State column in the lower section.
4] Start the FTI and FTS services and you’ll be back to where you were.

Further information is in the Archive Manager Administrator and User Guides on the following URL:

https://support.quest.com/archive-manager/technical-documents

NOTE: During this whole process the Exchange Store Manager (ESM) and Data Loader (DL) services will be processing items and ingesting them into the archive which will not be present in the indexes that were backed up and restored. So you could also stop the ESM and DL services during the Repair to insure that nothing would be missed should a restore be required. Note that this can cause the ESM to get behind and the Journal mailbox (if used) will also be growing and consuming disk space.