SharePoint Search Service 2013 Error

There are some common SharePoint Search Service Application errors which you might have encountered when you are working with the service.

Administrative status     Paused for:Index reset
Administrative status     Paused for:External request, Index reset
Administrative status     Paused for:External request

You may find these errors when you navigate to Central Administration and Manage service applications.

then Search Service Application:

You can find service error details in the Search Service Application: Search Administration page.

Common Resolution for Those Problems

If you see those errors, first you can do a quick workaround and see whether it's resolved.

• Stop the following services in all nodes in the farm (Actually this is needed for notes which search components are running, but if you couldn't find those, do it for all servers)
• You can go to services by type services.msc in run window (Windows + R) Stop “SharePoint Timer Service”

  Stop “SharePoint Search Host Controller”

  

• Most of the time, restating these services will resolve the problem, but if it is an index problem, it is better to delete the corrupted index.
• Go to each node and locate the following path:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\15.0\Data\Office Server\Applications\Search\Nodes\<HEX ID>\IndexComponent<N>\storage\data\

Delete all files and folders inside the data folder.

Then restart all services (SharePoint Timer Service, SharePoint Search Host Controller) again.

• Then check the problem of the search service by using the following powershell scripts.

REF: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn745901(v=office.15).aspx

$ssa = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication –Identity <ID>

using the following command, you can check whether search service is paused.

$ssa.IsPaused() -ne 0

If it is returning true, try to restart the search service using the following powershell script.

$ssa.ForceResume(True)

If it is returning false, try to execute the following scripts to find out the actual reason for not running.

($ssa.IsPaused() -band 0x01) -ne 0

Cause: A change in the number of crawl components or crawl databases is in progress.
Action: Wait until the topology change completes.

($ssa.IsPaused() -band 0x02) -ne 0

Cause: A backup or restore procedure is in progress.
Action: Wait until the backup or restore completes. After the procedure completes, run the command $ssa.ForceResume(0x02) to verify. For more information

($ssa.IsPaused() -band 0x04) -ne 0

Cause: A backup of the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) is in progress.
Action: Wait until the backup completes.  After the VSS backup completes, run the command $ssa.ForceResume(0x02) to verify.

($ssa.IsPaused() -band 0x08) -ne 0

Cause: One or more servers in the search topology that host query components are offline.
Action: Wait until the servers are available again.

($ssa.IsPaused() -band 0x20) -ne 0

Cause: One or more crawl databases in the search topology are being rebalanced.
Action: Wait until the operation completes.

($ssa.IsPaused() -band 0x40) -ne 0

Cause: One or more link databases in the search topology are being rebalanced.
Action: Wait until the operation completes.

($ssa.IsPaused() -band 0x80) -ne 0

Cause: An administrator has manually paused the Search service application.
Action: If you know the reason, you can resume the Search service application. Run the command $ssa.resume() to resume the Search service application.

If you don’t know the reason, find out why someone has manually paused the Search service application.

($ssa.IsPaused() -band 0x100) -ne 0

Cause: The search index is being deleted.
Action: Wait until the search index is deleted.

($ssa.IsPaused() -band 0x200) -ne 0

The search index is being repartitioned.

Wait until the operation completes.