The first thing I would do is a wait stats analysis and file IO stall analysis during the run. If it is on the same spid run in a loop...

You can shrink the database to reclaim space. But be SURE to leave some extra space. FAR MORE IMPORTANT is that you MUST REBUILD EVERY INDEX IN THE DATABASE WHEN...

Are the growths the same for all files?

I RARELY see the need for 8 files, but I have OFTEN seen too many files (even 8) make IO SLOWER...

Maybe sp_whoisactive will give you more details to help you isolate the problem?

This is quite an unusual situation, and I wonder if you haven't stumbled upon a bug (possibly known?). I hope the TF 4134 does you right, which would mean the...

1) I too would like to see some of the data differences delineated, along with some rows that are identical. Please share any patterns you note in the results.

Those results are too not unexpected, although I thought the concats might fair a little bit better.

This code is a pile of, well, I'll be nice and say it is suboptimal to the extreme. :hehe:  22 convert_implicits, 100 OTHER converts, 3.4MB query plan, the estimated...

I don't have time to dig into it, but this part of the code just smells bad:

AND  EXISTS (
    SELECT * FROM
    DistrictStudents
    WHERE DistrictStudentSchedule.MosisStateId...

1) Always compare estimated rows and actual rows. when they are off by 6 order of magnitude, bad stuff going to be happening in the plan. You need to find...

Column-level encryption is available in SQL Server. 

If you can go to SQL Server 2016 (and your apps support it or can be changed to support it) there is...