How to Fix Suspended Content Index on Exchange Server 2016 Database

In this article, I’ll show you how to fix a Suspended content index state on Exchange Server 2016 database.

Content Index

Exchange Content Index contains all the search data for an Exchange Database which helps Exchange show results to users when a mailbox is being searched.

When a Content Index is in a suspended or failed state search is not working on OWA and on Outlook Clients.

All the Content Indexing events can be found on Exchange Server the under the event source MSExchangeFastSearch.

Suspended Content Index

Below, you can see that I have two Exchange Server 2016 databases with Suspended Content Index

A closer look at the database details shows the state of the database and index status

Fix Content Index

Fixing a suspended or failed content index is done using the Exchange PowerShell and specifying the Database and Server of the suspended db.

Below, I am fixing the index on DB01 running on PVEXSRV2016 with the update-mailboxdatabsecopy command and the catalogOnly switch.

Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy -Identify DB01\PVEXSRV2016 -CatalogOnly

Depending on the index size the process can take anywhere between two minutes to 30 seconds

Below you can see the ContentIndexState after the cmdlet finished running.


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