SharePoint 2013: Perform a FULL backup when running the "Search Service Application"

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  1. Log into Central Administrator
  2. Click on Manage service applications. Scroll down to the search service application & click the hyper link   
  3. From within Search Administration, on the Left side,   under the Crawling header click Pause/Resume
  4. On the next page click Pause. (this may take some time to complete).
  5. Once the screen returns to Central Admin, click/enter into Backup & Restore
  6. Click "perform backup"
  7. Select the very first check box next to "Farm" (this will backup everything in your SP environment)
  8. Scroll to the bottom & click Next
  9. Backup Options
    1. Backup Type : full
    2. Data to Back up: Back up content & config settings
    3. Set you backup location (should be in UNC form. Also be sure to have the proper permissions setup for the directory (I had to give the Farm service account, as well as the SQL server service account Full control on the share")
  10. Click "Start Backup"

Your backup will begin. The screen will auto-refresh, however if you are impatient you can click the refresh button.

  1. Once the backup complete, confirm there are no errors.
  2. Go back into your search admin page, pause/resume & click resume.

 

 

*Note*

The search service will need to be in a Paused state prior to the backup. If you do not pause the Search service application your full backup will fail as well as all of the components associated with the search service.

 

You can check the status via:

Search Service Administrator

Check the "Administrative status" field.

The status should read: Pause for: external request

 

 

*Note*

If you have an error/warning/failure on your full backup that states something along the lines of  "cannot alter DB state "Backup" state "Backup" is already set. You will need to reset your crawl index, then perform a full crawl. Go back into the Search service application\then Pause/resume. Click Resume if it is paused. When the page loads backup, go back in & click Pause.

(if it was already in a running state, click Pause, then when it loads click Resume, then when that loads click Pause".

 

*I ran into an issue where it stated it was running but the status of the service via its admin screen stated that the status was Backup/restore*