Hi,

Using Exchange 2013 CU5.

When running Test-ExchangeServer across a range of mailboxes, the results are successful but the average search time for this test is around 45 seconds. The results are similar when using Outlook to search for a message that has just been delivered.

According to this article, Exchange typically indexes emails within 10 seconds. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123701%28v=exchg.150%29.aspx

What determines the indexing speed? CPU? I/O? Are there any perfmon counters which may reveal why the indexing is taking longer than expected. 

Kind regards

Hi

Based on my knowledge, CPU and  I/o both have some influence on exchange search speed. You could view the cpu utilization on the task manager.

Please restart the Microsoft Exchange Search service to verify if it can make effect.

If the issue persists ,you could try to rebuild the Full-Text Index Catalog .

You can see the below  article to get the detailed steps .

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa995966%28v=exchg.80%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396 

If it doesnt work, I suggest you could try to update the latest exchange version which may fix the issue.

Here is the download link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46373  

Best Regards,

David 

Hi

Based on my knowledge, CPU and  I/o both have some influence on exchange search speed. You could view the cpu utilization on the task manager.

Please restart the Microsoft Exchange Search service to verify if it can make effect.

If the issue persists ,you could try to rebuild the Full-Text Index Catalog .

You can see the below  article to get the detailed steps .

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa995966%28v=exchg.80%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396 

If it doesnt work, I suggest you could try to update the latest exchange version which may fix the issue.

Here is the download link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46373  

Best Regards,

David 

• Proposed as answer by David Wang_Microsoft contingent staff Thursday, May 21, 2015 8:47 AM
• Marked as answer by Simon_WuMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Wednesday, May 27, 2015 2:28 AM

Hi

Based on my knowledge, CPU and  I/o both have some influence on exchange search speed. You could view the cpu utilization on the task manager.

Please restart the Microsoft Exchange Search service to verify if it can make effect.

If the issue persists ,you could try to rebuild the Full-Text Index Catalog .

You can see the below  article to get the detailed steps .

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa995966%28v=exchg.80%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396 

If it doesnt work, I suggest you could try to update the latest exchange version which may fix the issue.

Here is the download link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46373  

Best Regards,

David 

• Proposed as answer by David Wang_Microsoft contingent staff Thursday, May 21, 2015 8:47 AM
• Marked as answer by Simon_WuMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Wednesday, May 27, 2015 2:28 AM
• Unmarked as answer by Andrew S. James 15 hours 30 minutes ago

Hi

Based on my knowledge, CPU and  I/o both have some influence on exchange search speed. You could view the cpu utilization on the task manager.

Please restart the Microsoft Exchange Search service to verify if it can make effect.

If the issue persists ,you could try to rebuild the Full-Text Index Catalog .

You can see the below  article to get the detailed steps .

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa995966%28v=exchg.80%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396 

If it doesnt work, I suggest you could try to update the latest exchange version which may fix the issue.

Here is the download link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=46373  

Best Regards,

David 

• Proposed as answer by David Wang_Microsoft contingent staff Thursday, May 21, 2015 8:47 AM
• Marked as answer by Simon_WuMicrosoft contingent staff, Moderator Wednesday, May 27, 2015 2:28 AM
• Unmarked as answer by Andrew S. James Thursday, June 04, 2015 3:58 PM

Thanks for the comments.

I doubled the CPU count from 4 to 8. Re-ran the test but the results were the same.

I upgraded from Exch 2013 CU5 to CU7. Re-ran the test but the results were the same.

I will now attempt to rebuild the indexes and report back the results.

I rebuilt the index for one database. I re-ran the test against a mailbox in that database but the results were the same. 

We still have an Exchange 2010 server (all mailboxes have been migrated to Exch 2013), so I created a new mailbox (8mb, default size) on that server and ran a test 3 times, which completed consistently in 3.1 seconds. 

I then moved the mailbox to Exchange 2013 (to the same database I rebuilt earlier) and re-ran the test. It was consistently over 40 seconds, which is the same as a mailbox of 20GB.

Both servers are running on the same vmware platform, but with slightly different resources

Exch 2010 - 4 CPUs, 8GB memory, 10K disk (raid 5)
Exch 2013 - 8 CPUs, 16GB memory, 15K disks (raid 10)

Admittedly Exchange 2010 has no workload, but Exch 2013 has much better resources and the results between the two are way off.

I cannot work out why searching on Exchange 2013 is much slower. Any thoughts/comments greatly appreciated.

We have same problem. But our Exchange 2010 has several hundreds of mailboxes and SearchTimeInSeconds between 2.5 - 3.5. Exchanage 2013 with same counts of mailboxes but more powerfull hardware between 20-60 seconds. I tested on 2013 CU8 and CU9.

Same issue here, running CU9. Just one mailbox (4GB) running on our pre production Ex2013 server 8 CPU's and 16GB RAM with high performance disks. No CPU, memory or disk bottleneck present on this server (during search CPU doesn't even reach 10% total CPU usage).

Hi,

I eventually logged a call with Microsoft back in June to investigate this. After the engineer escalated this up the dev chain and tested themselves with their lab 2010 and 2013 servers, they concluded... it was a design feature.

They confirmed the same results we are all seeing here. Exchange 2013 is slower at returning searches than 2010.

They went on to say Exchange 2013 is not 'at fault'. Performance was within their expectations. Essentially there is no issue to fix.

That's the official line I got. Hope this saves anyone else from spending money on one-off support calls. Would be nice to have someone from the Exchange/Search team comment on this. 

For anyone running HP/Autonomy Worksite DMS, I would stick with Exchange 2010 and skip 2013. I hope Exchange 2016 improves search performance.

• Proposed as answer by David Wang_Microsoft contingent staff 6 hours 21 minutes ago