Crawl and Index > Index Rollback

The search appliance tracks the continuous indexing, taking snapshots that are identified by unique date-time stamps. You select the snapshot of the index that you want to serve and the search appliance makes sure that index is valid.

Manual Rollback

The search appliance takes a snapshot of your index every six hours. You can use

• the Most Recent Valid Snapshot to serve your users (the default and recommended),
• the most up-to-date index as of the current time,
• the index snapshot as of 6 hours before the current time,
• the index snapshot as of 12 hours before the current time, or
• the index snapshot as of 24 hours before the current time.

When Most Recent Valid Snapshot is selected, if the index does not meet the Required URLs in Results (and/or number of URL prerequisites) set on the bottom half of the Crawl and Index > Index Rollback page, it automatically rolls back to the most recent valid snapshot. Other causes for a rollback are a problem with the configuration of the system, with your network or web servers, or other errors.

If there is a problem with the prerequisites for serving an index, a warning displays on the Rollback page and an email notification is sent to the person designated in System Settings to receive such notifications.

On the Crawl and Index > Index Rollback page, if you choose a snapshot from the dropdown list other than the default, the selection you make is shown on the page next to Most Recent Valid Snapshot. If the most recent valid snapshot is the current index, it displays "Current Time." If there is no valid snapshot, it displays "None."

If you select something other than Most Recent Valid Snapshot, and the index encounters a problem, you will see a warning, but the system will not automatically roll back to a previous snapshot. You will need to select another snapshot.

To roll back to an earlier index snapshot:

1. Select an index from the Serve content from index as of dropdown list.
2. Click the Change Serving Snapshot button.

On the same page, you can test any snapshot before you serve it.

To test the search results of an index snapshot:

1. Select a snapshot from the Serve content from index as of dropdown list.
2. Click the Test Center link. A search page displays.
3. Enter a test search term, click Search, and view the results.

Automatic Rollback

The Automatic Rollback settings help you quickly identify potential problems with an index. You specify the particular result that must appear in the first 20 search results for a given search query. If the result you specify does not appear in the first 20 results, the index automatically rolls back to the previous most recent valid snapshot. You can enter the same search term with different URLs, if you want to require several results display for that term.

You can also specify the number of search results that must display for a given search term for the index to be valid.

To specify one or more URLs that must be displayed for a search term before the new index can be served:

1. Enter the search term in the Search box.
2. Enter the corresponding URL in the Required URLs in Results box, or enter a number of results that must display.
3. For more lines after the three given, click the Add More Required URLs button.
4. Click the Save Changes button before leaving the page.

Read how the search appliance crawls and indexes your intranet and public web sites.