I used to keep the same sa password on every production server. Different passwords for dev and QA. I'm not sure it's a bad security risk, especially given the hassles...

My understanding is that Bulent is correct. Enterprise edition allows unlimited instances, but Standard must be licensed in each VM.

Image from Denby to review at: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/forums/images/denverdavis_ERD.GIF

It will be mostly a trial and error. I've seen 1.5 largest table or even 2x largest table for the data movement. For the log, depends on rows and will...

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones/datamigrationquicklyinsertingnewdata.asp

Get a list of servers into Excel, setup a "isql -S" in one cell, "sp_password null, new, sa" in the other and combine those with the server name into a...

That does sound long. I think SQL_ORACLE is right. I'd expect a 200GB file to be restored in 3-6 hours tops. If you have spread out the disk I/O, data,...

Stop using sa

No other way. Use a limited user, even a standard one, that has rights, like db_owner to particular databases.

Right click the database in Enterprise Manager, select Backup Database. pick a location and file name.

You can also setup a maintenance plan, select all "system dbs" and configure the backup...

This (http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/rpearl/abitabout64bit.asp) seems to indicate you still need PAE and AWE. The data cache gets all your RAM, but the buffers for structures and objects are limited to 4GB.

Not a...

Scott and Cliff have really answered well, so listen to them and thanks for the great answers.

The only other hting I'll add is that the query optimizer works better with...

What is "Reseter Database" and I'm not sure what the list of server roles has to do with you attaching a database. If you are connecting as a sysadmin or...

The log stores all your transactions, which could be more than the data size, depending on how things are loaded.

If this was a one time, or rare thing, you can...

USE is a statement. I suspect that your BOL is out of date. There have been 2 or 3 updates to BOL since the release. CONNECT is a permission required...

Thanks for the complements! We try and please let us know when we stray off the path.

Steve

Congrats Sarah and good luck in the new position!