SharePoint 2013 – Reset Index Partition in Search Service Application

Recently I have the issue with Search Service Servicece Application on SharePoint 2013 onprimise. This issue make all Search Query webpart and any search feature on farm come to Unexpected error. From the Correlation ID,  ULS logs show the error message “Index lookup failed to work since no active index cell was available”

After several hours investigated, the problem is recognized from Index Partition and SharePoint Search Host Controller service

Reason: The problem come from Search Service Application.

System have error with Index Partition components, so all content query from web pages and SharePoint sites can not render correctly to show.

To check this component, you can follow SharePoint Powershell script to check for Index Component State

PS > $ssa = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication
PS > Get-SPEnterpriseSearchStatus -SearchApplication $ssa -Text

Resolution: We tried to Reconfigure Indexing component from SharePoint Search Service Application and clean up error indexing content by following steps

Step 1: Check if Search Service Application Crawling and Indexing are Running or Paused.

You can run this command in the SSA management console to verify if the Search Service Application is paused.

$ssa.IsPaused() -ne 0

If ourput of this command returns False, the SSA is running. If this command returns True, the SSA is paused and you have to turn it to running. This article will tell you more about Paused reasons https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn745901(v=office.15).aspx

Common error cases message: ‘Search Service Application’ is paused for with reason(s) other than Index Repartitioning.
If you don’t care about Paused reason, you can run below command try to force the SSA to resume:
$ssa.ForceResume($ssa.IsPaused())If you still not get Resume SSA successful, just skip this step and go to Step 2

Step 2: Run Services.msc with Administrator permission and try to stop following services:
SharePoint Timer Service
SharePoint Search Host Controller

Step 3:  Delete all content of data directory from locationC:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\15.0\Data\Office Server\Applications\Search\Nodes\[Hex ID\IndexComponentN\storage\data\* (noted that: If you installed SharePoint folder in other drive, just change C drive your your installed foder)

Then restart services “SharePoint Timer Service” and “SharePoint Search Host Controller”

Step 4: Reset Search Indexing content

1. On the SharePoint Central Administration home page, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.
2. On the Manage Search Applications page, click the Search service application for which you want to reset the search index.
3. On the Search Administration page, under System Status, verify that the Administrative status of the Search service application is Running and not Paused.
4. On the Search Administration page, in the Crawling section, click Index Reset.
5. On the Index Reset page, verify that the Deactivate search alerts during reset check box is checked, and then click Reset Now.
6. In the confirmation dialog box that appears, click OK to confirm that you want to reset the index.

Step 5: Start Full Crawl again.

Since we reset indexing conten, you need re-run full craw to make Search Service App crawl all configured content to make search data available

After finished steps, Search Topology should be works fine with green check as below

 

Root cause: The problem may come from Windows Update on Jan 2016, so SharePoint server was automatically run Windows update and installed for many packages from Microsoft. It may impacted to SharePoint Search Service and Index partition was interrupted.