Operations - Content Indexing and Search

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Offline Content Indexing

Once you have configured the Offline Content Index, you can run or schedule the Content Indexing operations to create the Content Index which is necessary to search the protected/archived data available in storage. (If you have not already configured the offline content indexing, see Configuration - Content indexing and Search for more information on how to configure the Offline Content Index.)

Running a Content Indexing job allows you to create the content index for the data. The Content Indexing job is very similar to a Data Verification jobs as it follows the same set of operations. The job reserves the media and drive from where the data is read and will then read the data using the appropriate copy and segregate the backup data into files/messages, obtain the key words and create the 'content index' for the data.

Note the following:

By default, the software uses a storage policy copy pointing to a disk library and/or use the storage policy copy with the lowest copy precedence. You can also configure the specific copy that should be used for content indexing. See Enable (or Disable) Clients for Content Indexing for step-by-step instructions.
The software content indexes data associated with supported Agents during this operation. (Data associated with non-supported agents will be automatically skipped.) See Content Indexing - Support for a list of Agents that support Offline Content Indexing.
This operation communicates with a MediaAgent for reading the data - See MediaAgents - Supported Features, Agents and Devices for a list of MediaAgents that support the Content Indexing operation. You can choose the source MediaAgent from the Content Indexing dialog before performing the offline content indexing operation.
As the content indexing operation is both resource intensive and also requires a certain amount of free space, make sure that the memory and space requirements satisfy the requirements specified in System Requirements - Content Indexing Engine.

When a content indexing operation is run, it will mark the data that has been content indexed during the operation and will be skipped during subsequent content indexing operations.

When you kill and restart a content indexing operation, the already content indexed jobs (with content index status success) will not get re-content indexed. Also, partially content indexed jobs (with content index status partial) will get re-content indexed from the last file where the indexing operation was in progress earlier. However, if you pick the partial content indexed jobs for content indexing, then the job will get re-content indexed from the beginning. For information on picking a job for content indexing, see Content Indexing Options for Jobs on a Storage Policy.

When you run the operation for the first time, by default the system content indexes data from the date on which the Content Indexing Engine was configured for the storage policy. If for some reason, you wish to content index old data (or re-content index data that was already content indexed) you must manually select the jobs that must be content indexed and then re-run the content indexing operation. See Add (or Remove) Specific Jobs for Content indexing for step-by-step instructions.

See Start or Schedule Offline Content Indexing Operations for step-by-step instructions.

Offline Content Indexing jobs are restartable at the file level if they are configured. See Restarting Jobs for detailed information on Job restarts.

Online Content Indexing

Once you have configured the Online Content Indexing agents, you can run or schedule the Content Indexing operations to create the Content Index which is necessary to search file server/desktop data on the computer that are not backed up or archived. (If you have not already configured the online content indexing agents, see Configuration - Content indexing and Search for more information on how to configure the Online Content Indexing agents.)

Running a Content Indexing job allows you to create the content index for the data. The Content Indexing job on a Client is very similar to a backup jobs as it follows the same set of operations. The job scans the specified subclient content and provides this information to the content index engine (which is also configured in the subclient) which in turn identifies the key words to create the 'content index' for the data in the client.

Note the following:

Full and Incremental Content Indexing jobs are supported.
For Online Content Indexing for File System agent, the software will only content index data that are owned by the specific user. (Mount points and mapped network drives are not supported.) For step-by-step instructions, see Create/Modify Online Content Indexing Subclients.

See Start or Schedule Online Content Indexing Operations for step-by-step instructions.

Online Content Indexing jobs are also restartable at the file level if they are configured. See Restarting Jobs for detailed information on Job restarts.

View Content Indexing Results

During a content indexing operation, there might be files that were not sent to the content indexing engine for content indexing. For step-by-step instructions on viewing the items that were not sent for content indexing, see View the Items that Were Not Sent for Content Indexing.

From the CommCell console, you can also view the list of items that were successfully content indexed or failed to content index during a content indexing operation. For step-by-step instructions to view successfully content indexed items, see View the Items that Were Successfully Content Indexed. For step-by-step instructions to view the list of items failed to content index, see View the Items that Failed to Content Index.

For an online content indexing operation, you can view the list of successful/failed items from the CommCell Console and items that failed to content index from the Search Console based on the following conditions:

If there are multiple online content indexing jobs for a sub client and if the sub client content was not modified for all these jobs, then you can view the list of successfully content indexed items or failed to content index items only for the latest job.
If you modify the sub client content and once again perform an online content indexing job, you can view the list of successfully content indexed items or failed to content index items for the latest job as well as for the last job that was performed before modifying the sub client content.

Note that you can only view the items that failed to content index from the Search Console.

For more information on viewing the list of failed items, see View the Items that Failed to Content Index.

In addition, you can also view the total number of successfully content indexed items and failed items from the following reports:

Offline Content Indexing Job Summary

Online Content Indexing Job Summary

Important Considerations

It is recommended that you index only the jobs that are retained for longer period, such as Archiver jobs and Extended Retention jobs.
If data is encrypted using a pass phrase, content indexing will not be supported.
Deconfigured clients can be Content Indexed and Searched, if backup operations were performed before the deconfiguration.
When auxiliary copy, data verification, and content indexing operations are initiated, they will all utilize the same single auxiliary copy manager process, thus reducing the load resources on the CommServe computer.
When content indexing large files, you need to set the bDoNotSkipBigFiles registry key to 1 on the MediaAgent. However, only the metadata information for these files will be content indexed and the files will be marked as failed to content index.
When content indexing Exchange emails, the X header information if any will also get content indexed. This enables you to search for emails using the header information as the search keyword.