Moving the MS Search the Easy Way and The Hard Way
Posted by: Mark Morowczynski in Exchange 2003, tags: MS SearchRecently I’ve gone through the pleasure of having to move the MS Search instance in an Exchange Cluster to a new disk location. There are 3 options. The easy way, the dangerous way, and finally the hard but manual way.
The first way is the easy way. You basically take the mssearch offline, rename the folder, create a new folder as a mount point, then copy the data into it and start the service. Simple if you are able to keep the same drive location. This has a detailed walkthrough of what I sort of outlined.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938445
The second way I think its much more dangerous to me, since it involes deleting data. Basically if you wanted to simulate that you lost the drive and you need to recreate search you would do the following. Run a script that is listed in this KB that will delete the registry settings in the cluster on that node, stop and start the MS Search, delete the System Attendant and recreate it You will lose any custom settings you have in the System Attendant. Then you basically recreate the System Attedant. Detailed steps can be found here. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/830189/en-us
Wow that seems pretty scary, deleting data and hoping you dont have custom stuff if you don’t actually know it. Seems dangerous to me.
The third way is the manual way. Which is also semi dangerous but at least a controled danger. I take no responsibility for any of these steps. If you really want this done right call MS and open a support case or at least attempt this in a lab first. This is just a good direction with my fuzzy memory from a few months ago. I’m mostly confused by the passive node aspect of it. If I remember I’ll update it.
First you need to have your new drive set up for where the files are going to go. The MS Search needs to be online for this first part otherwise the registry settings on the local machine DO NOT SHOW UP. This is key. You can test this by taking the Search offline and seeing the keys disappear. You may also want to take the search out of the dependencies so it doesn’t take your entire Exchange Virtual Server Offline. You then want to change the following keys after you backup your registry naturally.
1.)Change the ‘SearchDirectory’ string to corresponding new drive location under -
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Search\1.0\Applications\ExchangeServer_<EVS name> hive
Change the strings ‘FileName’ and ‘LogPath’ & pointe them to the corresponding new drive location.·
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Search\1.0\Databases\ExchangeServer_<EVS name>
Change the strings ‘ApplicationPath’ and ‘DefaultProjectPath’ & point them to the corresponding new drive location.
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Search\1.0\GatheringManager\Applications\ExchangeServer_<EVS name>
Change the string ‘ApplicationPath’ and point it to the corresponding new drive location.
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Search\1.0\Indexer\ExchangeServer_<EVS name>
Finally check through out the hive to make sure nothing is pointing to the old location
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Search\1.0”
2.) Then take the MSSearch resource offline. (Note if you try to copy the data while it’s online it will sucesffully copy but it wont come on-line).
3.) Then on all physical nodes you need to change this registry setting.
Change the string ‘ApplicationPath’ and pointed it to the corresponding new location.
HKLM\Cluster\Resources\<GUID>of the MSSearch Resource>\Parameters
4.) Then copy the Exchangeserver_<EVS name> directory from old drive as whole to the new drive in the corresponding path. Rename the folder “_old” in the old path for backup purpose.
5.) Bring the resource online.
There aren’t enough Warnings in the world for you before you do this. Please test this in the lab first if possible.
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