A couple things to check:

Are the services running? Check the service applet for SQL Server. You ought to find a few services there. If you have both...

A couple links to help you. Updating pictures is likely through PoSh or C#
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rakhiguha/2015/09/27/active-directory-how-to-update-user-thumbnail-photo-using-service-account/

Creating accounts could be done like this:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/1293.processing-active-directory-information-in-ssis.aspx

You'll have to look through these: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/search/?q=user+login+permissions&t=s&sort=relevance

Not sure. The jobs should have been built. I'd drop it and run through the steps again. Ensure you completed everything correctly.

Single drives are always worse, since you lose everything with a failure. However, in Azure, you should have multiple copies from the infrastructure. You won't get less I/O from multiple...

I'm not quite clear what you mean. Are you saying that you have image files and some name/login associated with them. You want to use SSIS to import these thumbnail...

One thing to keep in mind is that this changes data inline, so copy your db (restore in dev), then mask.

The tool is a little non-intuitive. I'm working...

Make sure you click the use RegEx, the little square + asterisk button.

I would lean towards putting the PK and the email in the #NoEMail list. Then I'd put a token in the main list, as mentioned previously, because someone or a...

Here's a post on dates: https://voiceofthedba.com/2018/05/04/moving-birthdays-with-data-masker/

The master database contains server level objects like logins, linked servers, certificates, a few other things. There isn't a need to restore this if you don't necessarily need those items....

Work to live, don't live to work.

Definitely need time off, away from work things. Most of our tasks don't need to be done ASAWeSeeThem

I'll say this. Tracking changes in db development has worked very well for me. There can be collisions, but in small teams, we can usually work things out. However, I...