I have several hurdles with this particular server.

1. It's a dedicated sql server used by a dedicated app server that hosts a 3rd party software.

-- This in itself causes a ton of problems. Their code is extremely sloppy and doesn't clean up after itself. I have to reboot every couple of days to clear all the

abandoned processes it leaves behind.

--

2. There are no other environments besides production.

3. The vendor provides the most minimal support I've ever seen (4-day response time by ticketing/email system only)

At any rate, this morning the 3rd party put the kabosh on SP3. Their app can't take it. I'm deadlocked. Almost everything my monitoring tools list as being wrong with this server are things that I can't do (update to SP3, fixing the shitty code). The end-users will just have to live with the horrible performance.