Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog : Patching a mirrored farm with minimal downtime

Patching a mirrored farm with minimal downtime

For administrators of large SharePoint server farms, a newly-published article describes how to update server farms that use database mirroring, while incurring minimal perceived downtime for users. This solution is for enterprise customers who have high-availability needs and infrastructure. The article describes a step-by-step process for Office SharePoint Server farms that incorporate SQL Server mirroring. You can achieve similar results on Office SharePoint Server farms that are set up in a clustered server environment.

In brief, the solution requires that you:

· Disable mirroring and set the mirror databases to read-only

· Route network and database traffic to the read-only databases

· Apply software updates to the offline servers

· Route network and database traffic to the updated servers

· Apply software updates to the secondary farm

· Re-enable mirroring and set the mirrored databases to read/write

Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog : Patching a mirrored farm with minimal downtime