You have one viable courses of action available that I can think of.

Restore from the last clean backup - yes data loss will occur but there will be no corruption...

Yes. Exactly.

G: drive --> Meta-LUN for database data, striped across 3 LUNs

H: drive --> Meta-LUN for transaction logs. striped across 5 LUNs

I: drive --> Meta-LUN for database backups, striped...

As remember from my youth, the only 'certainty-s' were: Death and Taxes.

Now the information age has added another 'certainty': The computer will crash !

Failover has various phases: IP address, storage, services then SQL Server startup. In a Win 2K3/SP1 w/SQL 2K/SP3, I can see a complete 'failover' taking 3-5 minutes. Our clusters generally are...

here's a website you'll probably bookmark: http://www.connectionstrings.com/

One 'biggie' commonly missed is also the JOBs that the SQL agent executes. DTS and bcp also come to mind ...

death is not a constant, it is a state, a change in the state of existance ...

SQL Server service account should not be LocalSystem nore local computer accounts. They need to be domain user acconuts that are in the LocalAdministrators security group. As an additional security...

In order to monitor things (what you are doing and more importantly what is going on) you have no choice but to make him a sysadmin <period>. After all your...

Integrated security should work if, and I say if, the user logs into the domain via 'normal' means. In other words either your VPN has hooks into AD or the...

Change is the only constant of existance ...

I do not know if adding WINs would make a difference. We use DNS and WINs as standards here.

How much time are you talking abut having to wait anyway ?

If this is a scalability test then should't you be using quad CPUs and 4 Gb of RAM ?

All is well. Just continue and apply the service pack after the initial installation reboot. Here's the KB link:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;329329

Excellent points Philip. I'd forgotten about some of those hidden 'nasties' lurking in DRI ...

(I've got to review SQL 201 again !!!)