In case of having not strong enough hardware there’s a pretty common request for start the crawl in the evening and pause in the next morning, before the work day starts. Scheduling the start of Full/Incremental Crawl is pretty easy from the admin UI, but you have to do some trick if you want to schedule the pause too. Here is my favorite trick: use PowerShell!
Here is what I do here:
- Create a script to start/resume the crawl (CrawlStart.ps1).
- Create a script to pause the crawl (CrawlPause.ps1).
- Schedule the script CrawlStart.ps1 to run in the evening (like 6pm).
- Schedule the script CrawlPause.ps1 to run in the morning (like 6am).
Is it simple, right? ;)
Here are some more details.
First, we have to know how to add the SharePoint SnapIn to PowerShell. Here is the command we need: Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell.
Second, we have to get the Content Source from our Search Service Application:
$SSA = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication -Identity "Search Service Application"
$ContentSource = $SSA | Get-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlContentSource -Identity "My Content Source"
Then we have to know how to check the status of this content source’s crawl: $ContentSource.CrawlStatus. Here are the available values:
- Idle
- CrawlStarting
- CrawlingIncremental / CrawlingFull
- CrawlPausing
- Paused
- CrawlResuming
- CrawlCompleting
- CrawlStopping
Finally, we have to know how to start/pause/resume the crawling:
- Start Full Crawl: $ContentSource.StartFullCrawl()
- Start Incremental Crawl: $ContentSource.StartIncrementalCrawl()
- Pause the current crawl: $ContentSource.PauseCrawl()
- Resume the crawl: $ContentSource.ResumeCrawl()
That’s it. Here are the final scripts:
1. CrawlStart.ps1
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell
$SSA = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication -Identity "Search Service Application"
$ContentSource = $SSA | Get-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlContentSource -Identity "My Content Source"
if ($ContentSource.CrawlStatus -eq "Idle" ) {
$ContentSource.StartIncrementalCrawl()
Write-Host "Starting Incremental Crawl"
if ($ContentSource.CrawlStatus -eq "Paused" ) {
$ContentSource.ResumeCrawl()
Write-Host "Resuminging Incremental Crawl"
}
2. CrawlPause.ps1
Add-PSSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell
$SSA = Get-SPEnterpriseSearchServiceApplication -Identity "Search Service Application"
$ContentSource = $SSA | Get-SPEnterpriseSearchCrawlContentSource -Identity "My Content Source" Write-Host $ContentSource.CrawlState
if (($ContentSource.CrawlStatus -eq "CrawlingIncremental" ) -or ($ContentSource.CrawlStatus -eq "CrawlingFull" )) {
$ContentSource.PauseCrawl()
Write-Host "Pausing the current Crawl"
}
Write-host $ContentSource.CrawlState
And finally, you have to schedule these tasks as a Windows job, by using these actions: powershell –command “& ‘C:\Scripts\CrawlStart.ps1’” to start and powershell –command “& ‘C:\Scripts\CrawlPause.ps1’” to pause your crawl.
Ps.: These scripts work fine for FAST Content Sources in SharePoint too, in this case you have to use the FAST Content SSA.
Enjoy!