Umbraco Azure and Indexes Issue: Could not find file ...\ExamineIndexes\ExternalIndex_4l.cfs'.
Hi,
I have an Umbraco 13 website and its hosted on an Azure web app environment.
But sometimes the Search Indexes are getting corrupt and I get this error:
Could not find file
'C:\home\site\wwwroot\umbraco\Data\TEMP\ExamineIndexes\ExternalIndex_4l.cfs'.
I noticed I get it often when I deploy (via Visual Studio Publish) a new version to the site.
As a work around I have added a composer that deletes the files of the search indexes so it will rebuild itself and then it works.
But lately the error comes back even when I had not deployed anything.
I have also deployed the same website to a windows webserver and there everything works fine without index issues, so it must be something in Azure.
Is this a known issue and how to resolve this once and for all?
From my experience Examine and Azure Web Apps can be quite the hassel.
But then again, Umbraco Cloud is running on Azure.
There's a large difference to running a Windows and Linux Web App, where I've personally found the best results on Windows Apps.
You could also look at the ExamineX product, but that's pretty expensive.
You're not writing if you're mounting the TEMP files from a Azure Blob storage, which can also have a negative impact on stability.
That is also an area know to have problem, where you might have to some internet browsing to find better results.
As you mention, server stability on a traditional works fine, which we also found to be true.
We had not set the appsettings.json correctly, so I changed that.
But unfortunately the app had index issues last day and today.
We don't use Azure Blob. The indexes are stored on the same folder structure where the rest of the website is.
Is there a way to detect the error and then remove the indexes programmatically so it will be rebuild by Umbraco itself. Or are those files in use so you cannot delete them?
I would advise against doing programmatic deletion of the index files, as it's just a slippery slope for more severe issues.
You would also just be patching over the real problem, which could cause unintended side effects that might be very hard to narrow down.
One thing I forgot to mention is that using the latest version of Examine as they have actually fixed a lot of stability issues.
This can be done without changing anything else in the application, unless you have some very niche requirements.
You can try the V4 beta version, but in most of our projects we use 3.6.0
Beside what you've done and upgrading Examine, I don't really have any other suggestions.
We ended up ditching Azure Web Apps because of continued stability issues.
If you're an Umbraco partner, then you might be able to reach out to some partner support or book a code debugging session.
I would suspect that if someone can give you a good answer on stability with hosting on Azure, it would be Umbraco themselves.
Umbraco Azure and Indexes Issue: Could not find file ...\ExamineIndexes\ExternalIndex_4l.cfs'.
Hi,
I have an Umbraco 13 website and its hosted on an Azure web app environment. But sometimes the Search Indexes are getting corrupt and I get this error:
I noticed I get it often when I deploy (via Visual Studio Publish) a new version to the site. As a work around I have added a composer that deletes the files of the search indexes so it will rebuild itself and then it works. But lately the error comes back even when I had not deployed anything.
I have also deployed the same website to a windows webserver and there everything works fine without index issues, so it must be something in Azure.
Is this a known issue and how to resolve this once and for all?
From my experience Examine and Azure Web Apps can be quite the hassel. But then again, Umbraco Cloud is running on Azure.
There's a large difference to running a Windows and Linux Web App, where I've personally found the best results on Windows Apps.
Things you could do is to ensure you're following best practice for hosting on Azure as described here:
https://docs.umbraco.com/umbraco-cms/fundamentals/setup/server-setup/azure-web-apps
You could also look at the ExamineX product, but that's pretty expensive.
You're not writing if you're mounting the TEMP files from a Azure Blob storage, which can also have a negative impact on stability.
That is also an area know to have problem, where you might have to some internet browsing to find better results.
As you mention, server stability on a traditional works fine, which we also found to be true.
Best of luck!
Hi Sæve,
We had not set the appsettings.json correctly, so I changed that. But unfortunately the app had index issues last day and today.
We don't use Azure Blob. The indexes are stored on the same folder structure where the rest of the website is.
Is there a way to detect the error and then remove the indexes programmatically so it will be rebuild by Umbraco itself. Or are those files in use so you cannot delete them?
Hi Peter,
I would advise against doing programmatic deletion of the index files, as it's just a slippery slope for more severe issues.
You would also just be patching over the real problem, which could cause unintended side effects that might be very hard to narrow down.
One thing I forgot to mention is that using the latest version of Examine as they have actually fixed a lot of stability issues.
This can be done without changing anything else in the application, unless you have some very niche requirements.
You can try the V4 beta version, but in most of our projects we use 3.6.0
Beside what you've done and upgrading Examine, I don't really have any other suggestions.
We ended up ditching Azure Web Apps because of continued stability issues.
If you're an Umbraco partner, then you might be able to reach out to some partner support or book a code debugging session.
I would suspect that if someone can give you a good answer on stability with hosting on Azure, it would be Umbraco themselves.
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