cmille19, thanks for the prompt reply, appreciate it.

sorry to bang on but I need to clarify some points. you are using SQL clusters yes? Because mine are standalone servers so I don't have a virtual instance name. I am struggling to understand why you don't need to rename the server or at least update sysservers in master and entries in msdb because the server name has changed. (the systemdbs have after all in effect come from a different server).

updating msdb to run on a different server is easy in SQL 2000 but a nightmare in 2005.

are you saying you have to use named instances?

So your DR site is permanently used for QA, and if you failover you do without QA environment?

As you are booting from SAN anyway you don't see attaching all the secondary LUNS to a piece of identiacal kit waiting to receive them aa a method of failing over?