What kind of permission you do have on server and databases?

Yes, Agree with others.

search engine work differently in different version to improve the performance. However while doing upgraded one should keep the db in the original compatibility mode unless and...

Contact your VM admin and ask to check DISK I/O for the drive on which you do have issue. Prefer to perform DISK I/O check on all the drives.

If your database is not production than you can attached mdf file without any ldf file and it will automatically take care of creating new ldf file. check following link...

Thank you and appreciate all your time and interest in writing comments.

As mention above it is not possible. Why you would like to restore 2008 R2 System db to 2012? What is your objective?

Is the instance name correct? Is SQL recently installed?

One more interesting querstion and nice explanation. Thanks Andy.

Have you checked the application side? I suspect it's coincidence. As soon as you execute the SP first time it will take little longer due to compilation but next execution...

What do you mean by archived? Can you pl. elaborate terms archived? Have you implemented any archive solution to database?

Reason I am asking is: in ORACLE it is different...

It depends on how critical it is to verify data and what is the size of the data? Simply you can run the query to all user database to select...

It should be fine as database size is very small. Also think if you shrink and free some space i.e 300-400 MB how does it help you?

Good one! Thanks for the question.

Are you able to ping the server with sql server virtual name? or ping virtual IP address?

Easy one thanks Steve.