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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender Date: 03/06/2017

Over the last year, I've been putting far more focus into the Search Health Reports (SRx) and...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender Date: 11/30/2015

Let's consider this throwback Thursday. A couple of years ago, I posted this "PowerShell to...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender Date: 10/01/2013

SP2010: Search Query Load Balancing *Explained (part 1)

Seemingly “sporadic” query problems are often just straightforward failures being masked...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender Date: 08/24/2012

It's like Christmas in July - I'm currently waiting for my download of SharePoint Server 2013 and...

Author: bspender Date: 07/16/2012

SP2010 Search *Explained: Concepts and Terminology

In broad terms, SharePoint Search is comprised of three main functional process components: Crawling...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender 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...

Author: bspender Date: 03/16/2012

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