After upgrading to Exchange 2016 CU8 we noticed a Content Index State Healthy And Upgrading status on the mailbox database copies.
We did not really know if this would have an impact on the mailbox database redundancy , I mean if a fail-over is still possible even if the mailbox database copy Content Index State Healthy And Upgrading remains.
Upgrading to Version CU7 or higher comes with a mailbox database schema-update. After the update has been installed you will notice that Healthy And Upgrading is displayed under ContentIndexState.
Seeing this the first time I was not sure if I still can mount databases on upgraded copies where the Content Index State Healthy And Upgrading is displayed.
We opened an informational call by Microsoft and learned that this is caused because the mailbox databases receive a schema-update with CU7 or higher ( when upgrading from a Version CU6 or lower ).
It is still possible though to mount back mailbox databases to these copies. Depending on the size of the mailboxdatabase it can take up to several days until the ContentIndexState switches to healthy.
You can query the progress of the schema-update with these one-liners :
Shows how many mailboxes are left to crawl :
Get-mailboxdatabase -server ServerName | Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus | ?{$_.status -eq “Healthy”}| ft name,ContentIndexBacklog,ContentIndexMailboxesToCrawl -AutoSize
Shows possible errors to each mailbox database on the given server :
Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus -Server ServerName | fl Identity, ContentIndexErrorMessage
With these small CMDlets you are at least able to query and follow the status of the schema-update on the affected mailbox databases.
After we have switched back the active copies to the mailbox databases where Content Index State Healthy And Upgrading was displayed there were no complications or performance issues.
Without the new status HealthyAndUpgrading under ContentIndexState nobody would even have noticed the schema-upgrade on the mailbox databases.
I hope this helps and gives confidence to continue as usual with your tasks related to the CU install.
Have a nice day
Enjoy the sun
Thank you for this information. It is the first time I noticed this happen after CU update, but the explanation sounds logical. I found a lot of references on Internet about this “problem”, but you are the only one that included information from Microsoft support.
Hi ,
Nice to hear it helped. Thx for your comment.
We installed the CU first in our test environment. The difference was that there are only a few mailboxes in each mailbox database. The schema-update went through very fast.
So I couldn’t simulate the outcome in an authentic manner, when activating a database copy on an affected mailbox database. I found a lot of related stuff as well, helpful but as you say non of them gave me the peace of mind about what was really going on.
We needed a final vendor statement.
Bests
Sam
Awesome detail, after the upgrade yours is the only comment about how to track the update process…everyone else talks about its an error so thanks so much!!! LEGEND
Hello Alan ,
Thank you!
I appreciate your comment.
Have a nice day!
Sam