The developers at MS do not set this by default. They never have, not because they can't, but because they don't want to set this on a server where other...

I agree. Set a max, otherwise you don't know how far SQL Server will go. It tries to take as much as it can, though the OS has the ability...

Well, I'll disagree slightly on the Standard.

If the entire instance fails, all databases will move. If there is a reason for one failover, you can detect this with...

It's not really covered, or not covered like that.

Restore where? In a VM in Azure?

There's nothing that keeps your db synced with files.You'll need a process that can verify what's out of sync.

I'd look at the suggestions above, especially Data Lake.

Or random sections of worksheets used for different things.

Or auto-calculate macros.

It's not better, it's different

One server - single point of failure, depending on being able to connect to the other  instances, easier to admin,

On each...

CLE - column level encryption?

I think you want this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/relational-databases/security/encryption/extensible-key-management-using-azure-key-vault-sql-server?view=sql-server-2017

EKM should be valid in R2.

As Steve mentioned, the question isn't well phrased for us.

You can use DateAdd to add days to a date.

What I'd suggest is you mock up 5-10...