Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Index Propagation Permissions in Server Farm

When SPS is deployed in a server farm configuration, with the index server on a different machine than the front-end server(s), the propagation process may fail if permissions are not configured correctly. In the event log of the Index server, one or more of the following errors may appear:

  • An error occurred while propagating to search server
  • A connection with the Search service on a remote machine could not be established. Check the connectivity with the remote machine. If necessary, stop and restart the Search service on the remote machine. (0x8004111a)
  • 0x80070035 - The network path was not found. )
  • Index propagation stopped.

First, verify the account being used by the index server to enumerate the local services on the front-end server by monitoring the security log in the Event Viewer (if the account does not match the Default Content Access Account specified in the Server Farm Account Settings, re-enter the domain/username and password). To resolve the issue, add the content access account as a local administrator to each front-end server (Note: In some cases the account must be referenced explicitly - simply adding a domain group with administrative rights will not suffice).

Once the proper permissions are set, force propagation on each server (Sharepoint Central Administration > Manage Search Service > Manage Search Propagation). It may also be necessary to remove the search component from the front-end servers, reboot, then re-add it.