I had some bad memories while reading your article. Things can get ugly in a big way when dealing with SQL Server...Can you believe that SQL Server 7 was supposed to be able to run itself without needing DBA's (right)? SQL 2000 should probably fly the space shuttle or something. I have found that when SQL breaks now...it's not a small issue.

At the United Network for Organ Sharing, we had SQL 2000 running on clustered servers with the databases on a SAN. All of a sudden (I'm not kidding), a very important (1 megabyte) database file disappears off the SAN and now our 240 GB database is suspect. Now nobody in the country can match organs.

Having the cluster didn't help, since the problem was on the SAN. We pointed the app to our Hotsite, which was kept up to date via Log Shipping. It took several hours the next day to get everything back to normal, but lives were saved, thanks to Log Shipping.