Patent ID: 8296267
Filing Date: 2012-10-23
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method for upgrading farms in an online service, comprising: determining when to deploy a new farm in a network to replace an old farm; deploying the new farm; wherein deploying the new farm comprises provisioning different machines in the new farm to perform different roles for the online service; wherein the machines performing a same role are arranged in a highly available configuration; creating a backup for each database in the old farm while continuing to allow reads and writes to the database while the database is being backed up; copying each database in the old farm to the new farm; while continuing to allow reads and writes to the databases previously backed up in the old farm; wherein the old farm continues to process requests for the roles provided by the old farm; performing any upgrades to the databases in the new farm; automatically routing requests from the old farm to the new farm; and unprovisioning the old farm.