Monitoring an Exchange 2010 index crawl

If you need to rebuild an Exchange 2010 DB search index, the index state for the DB changes to "crawling". Unfortunately it doesn't give any indication if it's actually doing anything, and considering it's possible to get the status stuck as crawling, you cannot activate the database in a DAG while it's crawling, and it can take a long time to complete, the ability to actually monitor it's progress is important. 

So here's a trick to help monitor the progress of the index crawl:

- Start Performance Monitor by going to Start>Run>Perfmon

- Under "Monitoring Tools" select "Performance Monitor"

- Click the green plus sign to add a monitor.

- Select the local computer, scroll down to "MSExchange Search Indices", select "Number of Indexed Recipients" and "Number of Mailboxes Left to Crawl", and hit OK.

- Right click in the graph, select properties, select the "graph" tab, and change the view to report. 

Now you can see as the number of mailboxes remaining drops, making it much easier to monitor its progress and ensure it's working. Be aware some mailboxes take much longer than other mailboxes.