AXModelStore Import Downtime

We’ve been looking at the different methods of moving content from a dev to a production environment and after looking at the info on technet I just have a few questions. My understanding is that the application objects and their metadata is stored on the database server and the AOS does the processing for requests of objects.

If I install a modelstore to a different schema, can I bring that schema online with each AOS one by one, or do I need to reject connections from all AOS instances associated with the database then switch the schema.