SharePoint Strategery
Best used when strategy breaks down... (blog by Brian Pendergrass, Microsoft SharePoint - Premier Field Engineer)
Reasons to do a full crawl (*and it's not for schema changes)
To avoid burying the lede, I'll start by "boldly" saying... *You don't need to regularly schedule a...
Date: 12/06/2017
Crawler Performance, Hosts, and Impact [Hit] Rules
As part of the crawl processing flow, the Crawl Component starts "robot" threads that orchestrate...
Date: 06/12/2017
Search Performance: Troubleshooting with the Crawl Load reports
Last year, I dove into a case of AV slowing down crawls and within that post, I provided guidance...
Date: 04/21/2017
Search Health Reports (SRx) - Digging in further with PowerShell
After introducing the Search Health Reports (SRx) last year, we continued to extend the battery of...
Date: 03/06/2017
A shift from SRx back to blogging all things SP Search...
Over the last year, I've been putting far more focus into the Search Health Reports (SRx) and...
Date: 02/24/2017
SP2013 Crawling *Explained: Enumeration/Discovery (Part 3b)
With VerboseEx logging enabled, the crawl of a single item (or interchangeably, a “document”) can...
Date: 08/11/2016
Search Performance: A case of AV slowing down crawls
In the services world supporting Search, I commonly see the nasty impact of Anti-Virus (AV) on the...
Date: 04/27/2016
Announcing the Search Health Reports (SRx) for SharePoint Search Diagnostics
Brought to you by SearchEngineers@microsoft.com, the Search Health Reports (SRx) is a...
Date: 02/01/2016
SharePoint Search Topology Limits Clarified for the Crawl Component
As more environments begin scaling out to the documented limits for Search, a common question tends...
Date: 11/30/2015
PowerShell: Getting Link Counts per Host Domain
Let's consider this throwback Thursday. A couple of years ago, I posted this "PowerShell to...
Date: 09/03/2015
SP2013: Using Get-SPIndexReports to Troubleshoot Failed Master Merge
Ever had an SP2013 Index Component report a yellow exclamation point () to indicate a "degraded...
Date: 07/08/2015
The Upcoming Cloud SSA and Next Generation Hybrid Search: Initial Thoughts
At the Microsoft Ignite Conference last week, we got our first look at the upcoming SharePoint Cloud...
Date: 05/12/2015
MS Ignite “Effective Search Deployment” Session References (BRK3176)
Thank you everyone that came by to talk about our favorite subject... Search. We are incredibly...
Date: 05/05/2015
PowerShell to Deploy an SSA Across Multiple Servers (v2.0)
A few years back, I published a PowerShell script to deploy a SharePoint Search Service Application...
Date: 05/04/2015
Another Shameless Self-Promotion: Presenting at Microsoft Ignite 2015
Coming to Microsoft Ignite next week? Then I invite you to come see Kristopher Loranger and I...
Date: 04/28/2015
The most important Timer Job for Search you may not know exists
What comes to mind when I say "Application Server Administration Services" timer job? Based on the...
Date: 04/22/2015
SP2013 Search Index health reports for monitoring and troubleshooting
Update: The newest version of the Search Index Health Reports script can now be found with our...
Date: 04/15/2015
SP2013 Crawling *Explained: Starting the Crawl Deep Dive (Part 2)
With VerboseEx logging enabled, the crawl of a single item (or interchangeably, a "document") can...
Date: 03/24/2015
SP2013 Crawling *Explained: Orchestration (Part 1)
With VerboseEx logging enabled, the crawl of a single item (or interchangeably, a "document") can...
Date: 01/26/2015
SP2013: Understanding storage locations for files gathered by the Crawl Component
When gathering files from a content source, the SharePoint 2013 Crawl Component can be very I/O...
Date: 12/04/2014
Crushing the 1-million-item-limit myth with .NET Search Connector [BDC]
Ever heard the one about not being able to crawl more than a million or two rows from a single...
Date: 08/28/2014
SharePoint Search *Quirks: Query Variables
In several forums, emails, and discussions, I keep seeing this recurring question, "How can I limit...
Date: 07/31/2014
Problems Crawling the non-Default zone *Explained
In a nutshell, there is an undocumented assumption baked into SharePoint Search that the Default...
Date: 07/08/2014
Case Sensitivity and Duplicate URLs Getting Crawled
I've seen several scenarios where a single document gets crawled twice and leads to duplicate...
Date: 07/02/2014
Cheat Sheet: Finding the *real Crawl State
Ever had a Crawl seeming stuck Starting, Stopping, Pausing, or even Crawling and thought... hmm, now...
Date: 03/06/2014
From SPC14: “Troubleshoot Search” session (spc375)
Wow! I wanted to send a huge thank you to the >500 folks that attended our session today and for...
Date: 03/05/2014
SharePoint Search and Deadlocks in SQL Server
Deadlocks reported in the Search databases, particularly the Crawl Store database (which manages the...
Date: 02/10/2014
SP2010: Search Query Load Balancing *Explained (part 2)
In part 1, I described the load balancing that occurs among Query Components (e.g. SSA load...
Date: 12/09/2013
SharePoint Search *Quirks: Adding Content Sources
I recently encountered a scenario in which adding SharePoint Search content sources of various types...
Date: 11/18/2013
AAMs *Explained : Redux (and Presentation)
I recently gave a talk around AAMs and wanted to post my slides here (attached below as...
Date: 10/01/2013
SP2010: Search Query Load Balancing *Explained (part 1)
Seemingly “sporadic” query problems are often just straightforward failures being masked...
Date: 07/15/2013
Why Host Distribution Rules Don't Apply to SharePoint 2013
After reading my post to rebalance Crawl Stores in SharePoint 2013, several people have since...
Date: 06/30/2013
Alternate Access Mappings (AAMs) *Explained
Based on many of the support cases that I've seen, Alternate Access Mappings (AAM) may be one of the...
Date: 05/27/2013
Beware crawling the non-Default zone for a SharePoint 2013 Web Application
Update: I've now published another post "Problems Crawling the non-Default zone *Explained" that...
Date: 02/20/2013
Troubleshooting App Management WCF Endpoint Failures
I was recently setting up federated search for SharePoint 2013 using Result Sources to a Remote...
Date: 01/29/2013
PowerShell to Rebalance Crawl Store DBs in SP2013
In SharePoint 2013, simply adding a new Crawl Store DB doesn't cause the SSA to rebalance links...
Date: 01/28/2013
SharePoint 2010: Crawl process is stuck after SQL Server runs out of disk space
Maybe this is cheating in terms of a blog post, but I wrote the bulk of this Support KB and wanted...
Date: 11/02/2012
SP2010 Search *Explained: Crawling
Update: I've started a new series for explaining crawls in the context of SharePoint 2013. For the...
Date: 10/30/2012
Deploying SharePoint 2013 SSA Across Multiple Servers Using PowerShell
Update (5-May-2015) I posted a new version of this script at this link below: new script here...
Date: 08/24/2012
SharePoint 2013 - Initial take on changes to Search
It's like Christmas in July - I'm currently waiting for my download of SharePoint Server 2013 and...
Date: 07/16/2012
SP2010 Search *Explained: Concepts and Terminology
In broad terms, SharePoint Search is comprised of three main functional process components: Crawling...
Date: 06/29/2012
Tales from Training: FAST Search for SP2010 (protocol specs and white paper)
The week is over and the fire hose is now off. I haven't been able to post as much as I hoped over...
Date: 05/04/2012
Tales from Training: FAST Search for SP2010
So, today I started day one of my week-long FAST Search for SharePoint 2010 training. Over the next...
Date: 04/30/2012
Blind spots in Usage file and Web Analytics Reports
In my previous post (Troubleshooting SharePoint 2010 Web Analytics), I referenced a problem that can...
Date: 04/16/2012
Troubleshooting SharePoint 2010 Web Analytics
Web Analytics reports are pre-built reports in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 that use usage data...
Date: 03/16/2012