How to: Remove the Witness from a Database Mirroring Session (Transact-SQL)

At any time during a database mirroring session, the database owner can turn off the witness for a database mirroring session.

Turning off the witness changes the operating mode in accordance with the transaction-safety setting:

The transaction safety setting of the database is recorded on each partner in the sys.database_mirroring catalog view in the mirroring_safety_level and mirroring_safety_level_desc columns. For more information, see sys.database_mirroring (Transact-SQL).

To turn off the witness

  1. Connect to either partner.

  2. Issue the following statement:

    ALTER DATABASE <database_name> SET WITNESS OFF

    where <database_name> is the name of the mirrored database.