Search administration is one component that you cannot edit from UI (Modify topology). So before we start doing anything, we need to make sure that search is working fine and we are able populate search administration component.

If you have more than one search application, then you need to find out first which is the problem SSA and you can get this information by running below PS:

Get-spenterprisesearchserviceinstance  -> This would list out all search service applications list. Look for problem SSA and make a note of ID:

Once that is done, you can run below command to see if you have got the right SSA:

get-spenterprisesearchserviceinstance -identity <GUID> (Here you need to replace GUID with the actual ID value that you copied from above) and it should display only concerned SSA.

In the result, you should see Administration component getting populated as below:

Once confirmed, issue below PowerShell commands to move search admin DB to another SQL server:

$searchApp = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication
searchApp.Pause()
$searchApp | Set-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication -DatabaseName "<NewDBName>" -DatabaseServer "<NewDatabaseServerName>"

For above command, make sure that you have restored search Admin DB to the new SQL server and you need to provide that name in <NewDbName> field.

Hope above helps! :)

In this blog post, I would write about most generic issue in SharePoint 2010 search service application and I am sure many of you have already come across this:

In SharePoint 2010 - When you try to browse to a Search Service Application (SSA), it shows he below error:

"System Status:

Crawl: The search service is not able to connect to the machine that hosts the administration component. Verify that the administration component c8519b74 status -<GUID> in search application Search Service Application is in a good state and try again."

Additionally, you should see below errors in the Event logs:

"Description: The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.CrawlReportJobDefinition (ID 6dd22d5b-45cb-4860-aa01-d7f7d227a2f6) threw an exception. More information is included below. 

The search service is not able to connect to the machine that hosts the administration component. Verify that the administration component '9eff6ca0-1e01-4bf4-9653-b26ea54d0e5f' in search application 'SP2010 - Search Service Application' is in a good state and try again. "

If you run PowerShell command 'Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance', it will show "{}" (NULL) in AdminComponents field.

To get rid of this, follow below steps:

Browse SSA through CA and see which server is hosting Administration component, UI should look like below:

So with above example SP2010NEW is the server that is hosting Search Administration component. Login to that server.

Run below PowerShell command:

$varInstance = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance -local    (Assuming that you have only one SSA in farm)

If you type $varInstance and hit Enter key, you should see SharePoint Server Search instance details.

If you see it disabled then run another PS command -----> Start-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceInstance -Identity <servername>

Once above runs successfully, execute below:

$varSearchApp = get-spenterprisesearchserviceapplication

Now set search Admin component:

set-spenterprisesearchadministrationcomponent –searchapplication $varSearchApp –searchserviceinstance $varInstance

After it gets completed successfully, you need to wait for sometime, may be about 5-10 minutes. Admin component should be ready and you should be able to browse SSA.

Feel free to raise your questions. :)

I came across a scenario where a SharePoint site for e.g. https://sharepoint was taking more than 20 seconds to load and the expected load time is max 4-5 seconds considering when we have customizations on the site.

Below steps should help you to isolate if performance is farm wide or for a specific site:

Create a new site collection under problem web application with out of box team site template and default master page (URL should look like https://sharepoint/sites/site1 ).

Create a new test page under the problem site collection and with above example it should look like https://sharepoint/pages/test.aspx .

Try to browse above both URLs. If URL https://sharepoint/sites/site1 is loading fine and URL https://sharepoint/pages/test.aspx is still taking time to load then it means problem is with customizations or any component on the site which is taking time. This isolates to a level that problem is only with the specific site collection and not on the farm level.

Now in my scenario, I found that working and problem site have only one difference - https://sharepoint/pages/test.aspx was using custom master page. Here I got my first clue.

Then I enabled ASP.NET tracing for the problem test page. Add the below section to the problem web application's web.config file and save:
      <configuration>
           <system.web>
               <trace enabled="true" pageOutput="false" requestLimit="40" localOnly="false"/>
           </system.web>
       </configuration>

I must say that ASP.NET tracing is a good technique to use when you have customizations on the site and oberving performance delays.

To view the trace logs, you need to use trace.axd right after the URL. In my case, the problem test page URL was https://sharepoint/pages/test.aspx, so to view trace for test.aspx, you need to browse the URL https://sharepoint/pages/trace.axd

This URL will show you a report, in File column search for the problem URL (in our case, it is pages/test.aspx). So you should see an entry with pages/test.aspx and on the right side View Details link.

When you click on View Details, you should see the complete stack trace of the series of events that gets fired. Make a note of time taken for the page load. Typically, the first phase would be Begin PreInit and the last phase should be End Render. Total time was approximately 21 seconds and after looking at the Control Tree, we figured out that masterpage control was the only control that was sending largest data to the page. Refer the image below:

We noticed that there are some links on custom master page. Tried browsing each and every link. All links were working fine except one. That link was loading very slowly and occasionally came up with "Diagnose connection problem" error on the page. Digged more on that link and figured out that it is configured to pull the data from internet using a proxy that was set in web.config.

Tried pinging that proxy and got Request time out. That was the root cause of the performance delay.

Replaced problem proxy with the working proxy and site came up fine in few seconds. :)

Happy troubleshooting!