There is a feature in MOSS that enables you to gradually shut down the farm for maintenance. This feature is called "Quiescing." I have to admit, this isn’t a word I use everyday, so I looked it up on Dictionary.com and found the following:
"become quiet or quieter"
"To render quiescent, i.e. temporarily inactive or disabled. For example to quiesce a device (such as a digital modem). It is also a system command in MAX TNT software which is used to temporarily disable a modem or DS0 channel."
updated downloadable versions of the WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 SDKs are now available at:
Visual How-to Screencasts
· Creating Search Queries Programmatically by using the Search Web Service in SharePoint Server 2007
By Patrick Tisseghem (SharePoint MVP)
· Creating Search Queries Programmatically by using the Search Object Model in SharePoint Server 2007
By Patrick Tisseghem
· Exposing Enterprise Search in SharePoint Server 2007 by using Internet Explorer 7 and the Office Research Pane
By Patrick Tisseghem
Jerry Yasir's Blog 