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
To read the full solution, see Configure a server farm for minimal downtime during software updates
