Friday, December 30, 2011

Propagation shows waiting for initialization

This is the most common issue sometimes we face when try to add a server with Query role in to a farm
Scenario:
  • There are total 8 servers with MOSS 2007
  • 4 WEBs and 4 APPs
  • Indexer is on PRATIKAPP1 and other 3 have to be a query server
  • I have already added PRATIKAPP2 & PRATIKAPP3 as a query long time back and they are working fine and search is running smoothly
  • But recently we are facing heavy load in search and that’s why decided to go for another query server
  • So the plan is to add PRATIKAPP4 as a query in farm
Steps:
  • To achieve this goal I simply went to Central Administration > Operations > Services on Server
  • Selected the server from the drop down “PRATIKAPP4″
  • Then clicked on “Start” on “Office SharePoint Server Search” and applied path of Index folder shared on my APP4, hit OK
  • It took couple of minutes to be started
  • Checked timer job status and found the job to add PRATIKAPP4 has been initiated on PRATIKAPP1
  • Then checked Search Administration and found Propagation status showing “waiting for initialization (PRATIKAPP4)”
  • I had 400 GB of INDEX files data on other 2 query servers and periodically on PRATIKAPP4 INDEX folder was increasing in size, so I had to wait for some time.
  • Now the main villain came which destroyed my INDEX data and made it to count from 0 –zero
  • The reason was there are timer restart scripts ran on each server after 6 hours and I gone really mad when it INDEX file came back to zero from 250 GB.
  • All jobs again stated back from scratch.
Resolution:
  • Stopped OSearch from Central admin on PRATIKAPP4, which went to “Stopping” state
  • So manually stopped it using stsaadm command on PRATIKAPP4
    • stsaadm –o osearch –action stop
  • Then disable timer restart scripts on all servers
  • Again followed all above steps
  • Periodically checked INDEX folder on PRATIKAPP4
  • It was increasing in size but the speed was too slow
  • Finally it reached to 398 GB and under search administration I found the 3rd Query server added
  • Timer job status showed succeeded with 100 %
  • Propagation status showed IDLE
  • Everything was perfect as expected.
Thoughts:
  • What I was thinking to get this resolved?
  • Copy INDEX files from one location to another, but there were some active crawls going on and I did not want it to be stopped
  • Finally if the server was not listed then planned to run following stsaadm command on PRATIKAPP4
    • stsadm -o osearch -propagationlocation filePathtoPropagationShare
  • There are so many articles and suggestions available on internet which talks about this scenario, but what I suggest is to first check your environment and then go for resolution.
  • Resolution or any issue is easy and I bet we guys definitely aware with it, but the thing only thing required is proper analysis and crystal clear knowledge of own environment.
  • This is what I had faced and resolved, please feel free to provide me suggestions and inputs on my above steps.

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