You experience unexpected search behavior after you remove an index management server from your server farm topology in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (827851)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003

SYMPTOMS

In your server farm deployment of Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, you may find that after you remove an index management server from the server farm topology, users experience unexpected search behavior when they search for content. For example, some queries that users perform are successful while other queries are not.

CAUSE

This problem occurs because when you remove an index management server from the server farm topology, the catalogs that were created on that index management server are not removed from the search servers on your server farm. As a result, users can still perform queries on content that is contained in these catalogs.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, do one of the following as appropriate to your situation:
  • Remove all catalogs from the index management server before you remove the index management server from the topology.
  • After you remove the index management server from the topology, remove the search server (or servers) from the topology, and then readd the search server (or servers) that you removed. By doing so, the catalogs on the search server are deleted, and only active catalogs are added to the search server the next time that the index is propagated.

    Note The contents of the index are not accessible on the search server until the indexes are propagated from the index management server to the search server. You can force propagation to put the latest indexes on the search server (or servers) that you readd to the topology.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed in the "Applies to" section of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about how to configure the topology of server farms in SharePoint Portal Server, see the "Configuring the Topology of the Server Farm" topic in the "Configuring the Server Farm" section of the "Configuration" chapter of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide.

For more information about how to manage index propagation in server farm deployments of SharePoint Portal Server, see the "Managing Index Propagation" topic in the "Managing Search Settings" section of the "Administration" chapter of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide.

The Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide (Administrator's Help.chm) is located in the Docs folder in the root of the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 CD.

For more information about SharePoint Portal Server, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/office/sharepoint/prodinfo/default.mspx

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:1/9/2006
Keywords:kbpending kbBug KB827851 kbAudITPRO
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