Temporarily remove SharePoint 2010 Application server for patching

Question

SharePoint farm: 2 WFE + 4 App + 2 FAST Search + DB

The WFEs are load balanced.

The Application servers are using SharePoint's built-in basic round-robin load balancer.

We're patching our servers (critical OS patches only) and the WFEs are fine - we can remove one at a time to update. We're trying to work out how we can temporarily stop SharePoint using the application server we're patching at the time.

Do we stop IIS (but will SharePoint automatically restart it using one of its system services?)? Or do we need to stop a service through SharePoint so that it can see that a server should not be used, but not deleted from the farm.

Thank you

Answer 1

Go to Services on your servers and shut off the SharePoint Administration, SharePoint Timer Service, and SharePoint Search service on all servers before updating. This will disconnect SP WFE from the APP Servers during updating/patching. Shutting off the SP Search service will reduce the time it takes to install your patches and updates exponentially. Make sure to shut these services off on all servers before running your patches. Be sure to update your APP server that runs your Central Admin first. I always do my updates/patches in this order

1. APP (Central Admin)
2. Search Server
3. WFE

Once the updates are completed, then I go and start the services back in the same order. It is important to do your APP server with Central Admin first. Be sure to take snapshots before you update/patch on each server (If you are in a virtual environment).

Once this is complete, run the PSConfig tool on each server in the same order as your patching. This will reconfigure the content databases and re-sync your farm.