Exchange 2010 :An Active Manager operation failed; Content index catalog files in the following state: ‘Failed’

Today I got issue in my office soon after I restore Internet/Network related resources. Users were either able to open Webmail (Company webmail page wont display),Outlook client but not able to authenticate mail (Id/Password loop) or simply Outlook status would be disconnected. After Reviewing the Exchange logs I was getting the following “An Active Manager operation failed; Content index catalog files in the following state: ‘Failed'” message.

Detailed error message is given below :

Actual Error message :

An Active Manager operation failed. Error The database action failed. Error: An error occurred while trying to validate the specified database copy for possible activation. Error: Database copy ‘Los Angeles’ on server ‘EXCH1.Domain.LOCAL’ has content index catalog files in the following state: ‘Failed’.. [Database: Los Angeles, Server: EXCH1.Domain.LOCAL]

An Active Manager operation failed. Error An error occurred while trying to validate the specified database copy for possible activation. Error: Database copy ‘Los Angeles’ on server ‘EXCH1.Domain.LOCAL’ has content index catalog files in the following state: ‘Failed’..

This error was true for all databases.  The error mentioned the content index catalog files were in a failed state.  I checked to verify that it was with the command below:

Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus | fl name, contentindexstate

Name              : Los Angeles\LA-EXCH1

ContentIndexState : Failed

Name              : Texas\LA-EXCH1

ContentIndexState : Failed

Name              : Florida\LA-EXCH1

ContentIndexState : Failed

Name              : New Jersey\LA-EXCH1

ContentIndexState : Failed

Solution:

I had to update the contentindex and bring it from failed status to healthy by doing the following. (LA-EXCH1 is your hosting exchange server)

Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy “Texas\LA-EXCH1” -CatalogOnly

Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy “Florida\LA-EXCH1” -CatalogOnly

Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy “New Jersey\LA-EXCH1” -CatalogOnly

Update-MailboxDatabaseCopy “Los Angeles\LA-EXCH1” –CatalogOnly

Checked to verify that the content index was in a healthy state by doing the following command:

Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus | fl name, contentindexstate

Name              : Los Angeles\LA-EXCH1

ContentIndexState : Healthy

Name              : Texas\LA-EXCH1

ContentIndexState : Healthy

Name              : Florida\LA-EXCH1

ContentIndexState : Healthy

Name              : New Jersey\LA-EXCH1

ContentIndexState : Healthy

After that web mail worked and everyone was able to connect.