SharePoint 2010 Patching Fun Facts

One question I get asked a lot from customers is around
patching their SharePoint environments.  
In general you were always able to install the bits on all your servers
in any order you felt like going.. the real question or issue I have found is
the completion step which is running the Configuration Wizard.    Some customers went so far as to run the
installer to load the bits on their boxes but may have only run the
Configuration Wizard on one box… or in some cases maybe in a larger farm they
simply omitted a box.. this puts your environment at risk.   

In SharePoint 2010 I still like to hit my main server that’s
running CA first with Config Wizard (or PSCONFIG if you choose that
method)   But there is nothing stopping
you from going to the other boxes and kicking off the Config Wiz while the
other is running…. What will happen is that the other boxes will go into a
locked state for the upgrade.   Once one
box completes the others will in sequence of starting the Config Wiz run
through the 10 step upgrade.    As you can see in the screenshot below this
particular box is waiting for the lock to release to continue.

 
 
  
  
 The one real take away I need to make is to ensure in a multi-server environment you run this on each server.