Solve Error – FailedAndSuspended Index for Exchange 2013

Exchange Information store is responsible for fulfilling all user’s requests as it is the core data storage palace for Exchange server. It stores multiple user mailboxes and provides managing of data. But while its utilization, the Information store creates some problems which either drop the email messages into draft while exchanging messages or some DAG related problems. All these problems are due to the fact that the database is facing Indexing issues and is causing “FailedAndSuspended” content index for Exchange database.

More about “FailedAndSuspended” Content Index – Error

The content indexing in Exchange database enables quick client searches and provides equivalent results for the queries. But to it’s contrary, a Failed and Suspended message are encountered specifying that Exchange server is unable to fix the problems that are faced during normal operations. This situation needs a fix with a proper solution technique.

In most typical cases, database corruption is the most common reason for the occurrence of Indexing issues in Exchange 2013. Therefore, a quick and efficient fix is to use a professional tool for repairing and converting the database. An EDB Converter Software will give you successful results even in case of high level of corruption in Exchange database. Or you can simply use an inbuilt utility like Eseutil or NewMailboxRepairRequest for fixing the minor level of corruption.

 What to do Next

To begin with, you need to confirm and check the health report of the Exchange database for “FailedAndSuspended” content index. And to do so, you can run the following PowerShell command :

Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus | FL Name, ContentIndexState

On successfully running the command, you will have a list of failed and suspended databases. Where “Healthy” refers to a perfect Exchange Database while “Failed” or FailedorSuspended” refers to unhealthy or improper indexed database.

Note: The user will keep on working with the Failed or Suspended Exchange mailboxes that too without any problem. It’s just that the search performances with OWA will be slower and affected.

Solutions for “FailedAndSuspended” Content Index

Method 1: 

Normally, you can run an Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy cmdlet in case of content index failure. This command will reseed the content index from a healthy copy belonging to another database. But this method too has some limitation.

This approach is not possible with a single-copy database which is running on Exchange server. As there is no healthy copy available for reseeding the content, the process cannot proceed further. Thus, it is now suggested to completely rebuilt the index. To do so you can follow the below-mentioned steps:

1. Firstly, stop the Exchange search control host and Exchange Search.
2. Find the location of context index database by referring to the name of the database.
3. Now, delete that folder and repeat the process or each failed Index Database.
4.  In the end, restart the services again to rebuild the content index successfully.

On successful completion of the procedure, the context index of the database is recreated.  The procedure might take some time depending upon the amount of data stored in the Exchange database. Moreover, you can cross-check the health of the database after restarting the services.

Method 2:

Exchange server indexing problem can be due to some simple services issue. Hence, you can do the following to resolve the problem.

1. Check your Services setup and in case of improper setup, fix it by creating AD DS security groups which are used by indexing services.
2. Enable Full Control Permission and Network Settings in Administrator and security tab settings respectively.
3. Now restart the Exchange Search and Controller Services.

Method 3:

In case of email struck situation, you need to perform the following:

1. Perform the “Method 2” solution to make sure that the services are running properly.
2. Then you can restart the following services to deliver the messages successfully and also resolve the error caused by exchange indexing issue.

“MSExchangeSubmission”, “MSExchangeDelivery”

“MSExchangeTransport”

Conclusion

All possible causes and effective solutions of error “FailedAndSuspended” Content Index for Exchange 2013 are being discussed in the blog. You can either use a direct approach tool in case of database corruption or use above-mentioned manual methods in case of services issues. These solutions will definitely help you troubleshoot the error with no data loss.