Propagation Status - Waiting for Initialization

i had a customer with 19,000 users and 5 server farm with 2 x WFE.

The problem had to do with search. After applying the cumulative patch from Feb, things did not really good.

In the search administration site, under search setting, the Propogation Status showed "Propagation Status - Waiting for Initialization ().

Event ID: 6482 was logged in the event log of the query server with the reason being something like this "Object 66a9ed68-c956-4bb3-af4f-3b9eb257a64e not found".

The waiting for initialization error points to the process of of propogation in a stuck state. So got to restarting the Windows SharePoint Administration services on both the query servers (WFE) and the propogration kick started. This services is found in the Services applet in the Administration tools of the WFE servers.

Before doing anything drastic, understand how search works in a SharePoint farm. Know the services involved, know the process involved and the flow of this services from index to propogation.

March 27, 2010