only if you need the drive space or have issues copying the database to other environments with the file that size,

Having empty space in a file does no harm, and...

you can specify a different directory for your binaries and database files, and also seperate system databases from user data files, user log files and tempdb files.

there is no benefit...

SQL server is not good at scale-out (in particular), or DR, 2012 always on is getting there but its still complex.

This is because SQL is so tied to the servername...

as this has not received a response what I meant by this was you must be in...

are you connected to the master database when you issue the command?

thanks guys, appreciate it.

I'll check that code out.

sounds like these users just need adding to the db_datareader role and no other, plus use the decrypting functions to read the data.

the other way would be to provide read...

go to the errorlog of the target server and see if there any login failure messages.

looks like either invalid ID, password, or id 'ticket' is not defined to the target...

this would all be controlled by the permissions you grant within the database.

to clarify free_mascots point, you can restore from a differential if a full backup has not been taken of the primary at a point after the last successful log restore.

answered this just to find out if DOA did mean dead on arrival (or Database Out of Action)

that will work fine. As long as SQL is down whilst you do it and all the drives SQL sees end up with the same letters, this will work (i...

I do it often enough so I can quickly recover from a clean backup, so if I have 3 days worth of backups on the server, I checkdb every 3...

having to select 3 answers somewhat gave it away...........:-)

aah, thats a different problem to the one I thought you were originally describing.

You need to bring the smaller datafiles up to the size of the original as much as...