It's time to configure Exchange Server high availability because we did install a second Exchange…
Disable search indexing Exchange
By default, Exchange Search is enabled for all new mailbox databases. It does not need extra configuration. But, if you want to stop Exchange Search from indexing mailbox content, you can disable it. You can disable indexing on individual mailbox databases or an entire Exchange server.
When you are migrating users to a new database, I recommend disabling the search index. Disable indexing on that specific database or entire Exchange server. Don’t forget to enable search indexing after you finish the migration.
Table of contents
Check search indexing on database
Run Exchange Management Shell as administrator. Run the following command.
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[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled | Format-Table -AutoSize Name IndexEnabled ---- ------------ DB3-2016 False DB1-2016 False DB6-2016 True DB9-2016 False DB20-2016 False DB4-2016 False DB12-2016 False |
The database DB6-2016 is showing as IndexEnabled True. It means that indexing is enabled on that database. If it shows False, it means that indexing is disabled.
If you want to know the indexing status of a particular database, run the following command. Note: I want to show you how it looks when indexing is enabled or disabled.
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[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase DB6-2016 | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled | Format-Table -AutoSize Name IndexEnabled ---- ------------ DB6-2016 True |
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[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase DB1-2016 | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled | Format-Table -AutoSize Name IndexEnabled ---- ------------ DB1-2016 False |
If it shows IndexEnabled True, it means that indexing is enabled.
If it shows IndexEnabled False, it means that indexing is disabled.
Indexing is enabled on database DB6-2016. Let’s see how to disable indexing.
Disable search indexing on database
Run the following command to disable indexing on that particular database. After that, check the status.
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[PS] C:\>Set-MailboxDatabase DB6-2016 -IndexEnabled $false [PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase DB6-2016 | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled | Format-Table -AutoSize Name IndexEnabled ---- ------------ DB6-2016 False |
You can also run the following command to check the indexing. This will list all the databases.
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[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled | Format-Table -AutoSize Name IndexEnabled ---- ------------ DB3-2016 False DB1-2016 False DB6-2016 False DB9-2016 False DB20-2016 False DB4-2016 False DB12-2016 False |
Database DB6-2016 search indexing is disabled.
Disable search indexing on Exchange Server
Disable indexing on the Exchange Server. Run the following commands.
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[PS] C:\>Stop-Service MSExchangeFastSearch [PS] C:\>Set-Service MSExchangeFastSearch -StartupType Disabled |
Check if indexing is disabled on all the databases.
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[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled | Format-Table -AutoSize Name IndexEnabled ---- ------------ DB3-2016 False DB1-2016 False DB6-2016 False DB9-2016 False DB20-2016 False DB4-2016 False DB12-2016 False |
Enable search indexing on Exchange Server
Run Exchange Management Shell as administrator. Enable indexing on the Exchange Server. Run the following commands.
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[PS] C:\>Set-Service MSExchangeFastSearch -StartupType Automatic [PS] C:\>Start-Service MSExchangeFastSearch |
Check if indexing is enabled on all the databases.
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[PS] C:\>Get-MailboxDatabase | Select-Object Name, IndexEnabled | Format-Table -AutoSize Name IndexEnabled ---- ------------ DB3-2016 True DB1-2016 True DB6-2016 True DB9-2016 True DB20-2016 True DB4-2016 True DB12-2016 True |
Everything is looking great!
Read more: Monitor Exchange database index state crawling »
Conclusion
In this article, we talked about how to disable search indexing. We also talked when you should disable indexing. You can read more about disabling Exchange search indexing at the Microsoft website.
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