A customer showed me a couple of errors from his ULS log:
UsageAnalyticsTimerJob-12417730-3f25-49fb-846b-e40d49878aad : Usage Analytics has not completed successfully the last 1497 hours.
UsageAnalyticsTimerJob-12417730-3f25-49fb-846b-e40d49878aad : Previous execution of the analysis failed (consecutive failed runs: 6).
UsageAnalyticsTimerJob-12417730-3f25-49fb-846b-e40d49878aad : Search Analytics has not completed for 63 days. Last completed at: 08/02/2016 00:10:04.
UsageAnalyticsTimerJob-12417730-3f25-49fb-846b-e40d49878aad : Failed to start Usage Analysis.
The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Analytics.UsageAnalyticsJobDefinition (ID 1a74d33a-370e-4dae-a19c-d798e435495b) threw an exception. More information is included below. An update conflict has occurred, and you must re-try this action. The object UsageAnalyticsJobDefinition Name=Usage Analytics Timer Job for Search Application GUID was updated by Domain\User, in the OWSTIMER (xxxx) process, on machine SERVERNAME. View the tracing log for more information about the conflict.
Update conlfict? That's an easy one, right? Just run the Config Wizard. Right?
No. I tried running the Wizard and ran into this error:
Failed to provision the SharePoint Central Administration Web Application. An exception of type Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUpdatedConcurrencyException was thrown. Additional exception information: An update conflict has occurred, and you must re-try this action. The object SPWebConfigFileChanges Name=WebConfigChanges - GUID was updated by Domain\User, in the powershell (xxxx) process, on machine SERVERNAME. View the tracing log for more information about the conflict. Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUpdatedConcurrencyException: An update conflict has occurred, and you must re-try this action. The object SPWebConfigFileChanges Name=WebConfigChanges - GUID was updated by Domain\User, in the powershell (xxxx) process, on machine SERVERNAME. View the tracing log for more information about the conflict.
Than maybe I could simply start the service manually and check on the Config Wizard later? Well, that didn't work either, same issues as before. So what was wrong? I was able to crawl and I was able to search for items, but analytics kept on bugging me.
Good ol' Windows was the cause of all this commotion. Something went wrong with the file system cache! I cleared the cache and the system started to work again, without those annoying errors.
1. Stop the SharePoint Timer Job on all the SharePoint Servers.
2. Go to this directory: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Microsoft\SharePoint\Config\
There can be multiple folders here, you will need the one with the Cache.ini file in it
3. Backup the Cache.ini
4. Remove all files except the Cache.ini
5. Open the Cache.ini and remove the content of that file
6. Start the SharePoint Timer Job again.
Please keep in mind, that you will have to do this on all SharePoint Servers. Ideally repeat those steps on every server while the Timer Job is deactivated.