you might like to read my experience here http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/grumpyolddba/archive/2010/09/04/ssrs-do-you-back-up-reportservertempdb.aspx

I have to admit that I tried using this option in jobs, possibly in sql 2000 but found it problematic, can't remember why now, may have been to do with...

I've made a note of this, thanks.

no I don't have issues with bandwidth to the SAN, the issue is really the server architecture which seems to stall at around 2 million page reads a sec (...

could you clarify what you're asking?

with 200GB of memory I can't believe this is an x32 system? Min and max memory only set the limits for the buffer cache, in Denali I beleive this...

you might gain performance by partitioning on the date - it all depends if the data you work on can be limited to one or two partitions.

There are lots of...

I'm not 100% clear on what you are asking. By remote server do you mean a DR standby server?

I hate inplace upgrades ; however I believe now with 2008 this is seemless - I did do one upgrade from std to enterprise but didn't have sharepoint installed so...

thanks - I don't really need cores, 16 is ample, what I want is faster - so memory, bus speed and cpu clock speed etc.

These look interesting, I currently use...

putting the database into single-user that way is a very brutal, but effective method to kill off connections. But you really need to fix the problem rather than just killing...

Backing up databases tends to be limited to the subsystem speed and bandwidth. You can create your backup across multiple files, see this sqlcat post for details http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlcat/archive/2008/03/02/backup-more-than-1gb-per-second-using-sql2008-backup-compression.aspx

It's...

seems the top contender is an IBM 3850 X5.

not one I've encountered. does the path exist? does the file exist? Is it in the right place and not somewhere else?

I usually remove them - hate generic stuff! However, don't unless you're absolutely sure your roles and permissions are right. Even more so if you're on a cluster.

I don't...