SBS 2011 Migration OS Install – Microsoft Exchange Search ExSearch CPU at 100%

We are in the process of migrating our SBS v7 to SBS 2011 installed as a VM on one of our Hyper-V servers.

Once we had completed the Migration Mode OS install of SBS 2011 RTM we saw the following:

The Microsoft.Exchange.Search.ExSearch.exe process was keeping one of the vCPUs pinned at 100% even after a reboot.

Now, since we did not have our mailboxes migrated over we did not pay too much attention to the situation until now.

The process is still running at 100% even though our Public Folders and our mailboxes are now resident on the new SBS 2011 RTM VM.

So, we needed to figure out where the problem was.

The first step we did was to move the Arbitration and FederatedMail system mailboxes following these instructions:

• Microsoft Unified Communications – User Group, India: Delete default Mailbox Database & move Arbitration Mailboxes

Note that the text of one command is missing a bit at the end:

• 
• It should be:
  • New-MoveRequest –Identity “SystemMailbox{abcdeotrnsdosd-thedefaultname-nsdfrnfsfdsds}” TargetDatabase “E-DB02”

Once we completed the above steps, though we did not go so far as to delete the source SBS v7 Exchange databases yet, we still saw the process running at 100%.

So, we rebooted the box.

That did not work and the Exchange BPA came up clean as well.

We then reset the index service using the following instructions:

• SHEENAUSTIM.com Exchange 2010 Search Reset Search Index

The first few minutes after we ran the reset script the service went right back to 100%. Though, after a few minutes the process actually dropped down to a reasonable level.

Hat Tip: Michael B. Smith

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer