SharePoint Search Archival Test

The Search feature of the Microsoft SharePoint server not only makes it possible to search through content, documents, and people within the SharePoint sites, but also through external sources such as Windows file shares, public Microsoft Exchange server folders, and standard web sites.

The Archival and Schema plugins are internal components of the Microsoft SharePoint server Search engine, typically responsible for processing the metadata of indexed documents. By monitoring these components, administrators can efficiently evaluate how well the Microsoft SharePoint server search feature is functioning, identify irregularities early, and fine-tune the Microsoft SharePoint server to ensure peak performance of the search engine.

This test monitors the performance of the SharePoint Foundation Search Archival Plugin.

Note:

This test will report metrics only if the SharePoint Foundation Search Archival Plugin is available on the target SharePoint server.

Target of the test : A Microsoft SharePoint Server

Agent deploying the test : An internal/remote agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results each for the Microsoft SharePoint Server that is being monitored

Configurable parameters for the test

Parameters	Description
Test period	This indicates how often should the test be executed.
Host	The host for which the test is to be configured.
Port	The port at which the host server listens.

Measurements made by the test

Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Upload queues available to filtering threads	Indicates the number of upload queues that are available to filtering threads in this plugin.	Number
Queues committing changes and completing uploads	Indicates the number of queues that are exclusively allotted for committing the changes and completing the uploads.	Number
Queues waiting to flush data to the property store	Indicates the number of queues that are waiting to flush data to the property store.	Number	A property store is a table of properties and their values that are used and maintained by the Search service. Each row in the table corresponds to a document in the full-text index.
Queues being used by filtering threads	Indicates the number of queues that are being used by the filter threads in this plugin.	Number
Bulk insert sessions to the database server	Indicates the number of active bulk insert sessions to the database server.	Number
Documents processed	Indicates the number of documents that are processed in this plugin during the last measurement period.	Number	A high value is desired for this measure. If the value decreases steadily over a period of time, it indicates a performance bottleneck.
Documents marked for retry by archival plugin	Indicates the number of documents that were marked for retry from this plugin during the last measurement period.	Number	Ideally the value of this measure should be low. A higher value may indicate a performance bottleneck.
Documents waiting for a queue	Indicates the number of documents that were waiting for a queue during the last measurement period.	Number	Ideally the value of this measure should be low. A higher value may indicate a performance bottleneck.