SharePoint Cloud Hybrid Search Tips

I recently set up SharePoint 2016 hybrid in a lab environment for customer demos. I thought I would post some quick tips/tricks, specifically for Cloud Hybrid Search based on what I learnt during the configuration – 

1.  Delete your existing on-prem SSA if you have one configured already. The Cloud SSA which you provision as part of the Hybrid picker or the PowerShell scripts replaces this.
2.  If you get a “The search request was unable to connect to the Search Service” error after deleting your existing on-prem SSA when trying to search for content in on-prem, don’t panic – just wait. This is because it takes time for existing web apps to hook up to the new Cloud SSA. I did edit the connections for my web app and connect to the Cloud SSA proxy manually though so this may have fixed it for me.
   
3.  The configuration guide for Cloud Hybrid Search walks through creating a remote result source in the Cloud SSA to ensure on-prem results can still be retrieved. I noticed that this wasn’t actually required when using the PowerShell scripts as this result source was pre-created for me.
4.  Use the PowerShell scripts – I personally prefer scripting than configuring through the UI but I guess this depends on personal preference.
5.  Lastly – make sure you logon to Office 365 as a licensed user who exists in your on prem domain unlike me! ?‍♂️ As I was left wondering why on prem search results wouldn’t appear in my O365 search centre!

Hopefully this helps those of you who are on your journey to hybrid – it’s worth it!