After performing a SharePoint 2013 upgrade we were having trouble with our search functions and got a rather generic error message. After much work we were able to solve the problem.
After doing a migration upgrade of SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013, search failed with:
Sorry, something went wrong.
A correlation id is provided.
We checked our Content Sources from Central Administration->Manage Services on Server->SharePointServer Search->Search Service Application->Content Sources and found that Full Crawls had completed successfully.
You will find a TON of log enties for that correlation id, so finding the root cause is daunting. Buried in the results you will find a 500 Service Unavailable error connecting to the Metadata Management Service.
In the Search Service Application, we saw that in Queries and Results->Search Dictionaries, we had an error:
The Managed Metadata Service or Connection is currently not available. The Application Pool or Managed Metadata Web Service may not have been started.
We verified that the IIS->Application Pool had all pools started.
We verified that Central Administration->Manage Services on Server->Managed Metadata Web Service was started. (This service is generating the 500 Service Unavailable.)
We then found that when we select Central Administration->Manage Service Applications->Managed Metadata Service Application (your name may be slightly different) and click Properties from the ribbon, we saw the same error shown in Search:
The Managed Metadata Service or Connection is currently not available. The Application Pool or Managed Metadata Web Service may not have been started.
There are a lot of suggestions for solving this, but we fixed ours when we:
In Central Administration->Manage Service Applications, we deleted the Managed Metadata Service Application Proxy and the Managed Metadata Service Application. (Don’t delete the data when you do this or you will lose your SQL Server database.)
We then repeated our PowerShell actions from the migration/upgrade:
$applicationPool = Get-SPServiceApplicationPool -Identity ‘SharePoint Web Services default’
$mms = New-SPMetadataServiceApplication -Name ‘Managed Metadata Service Application’ -ApplicationPool $applicationPool -DatabaseName ‘Managed Metadata Service_Acumen’
New-SPMetadataServiceApplicationProxy -Name ‘Managed Metadata Service Application Proxy’ -ServiceApplication $mms -DefaultProxyGroup
Change your Name and DatabaseName values.
Our first search test failed, but while we were watching the ULS Viewer, we saw lots of entries with the same correlation ids. We tried search again after about 3 minutes and it worked.
