How would you do this manually? If I said today, compress the partition from yesterday, what would you do? Likely you can get the code right and then look at...

Potentially. If you can't take a tail log backup, any changes not in data files will be lost.

For mirroring, the rules are to really patch the mirror first. Stop the services on the mirror (secondary) side, apply the patches. Bring back up and sync. Then start applying...

Are there other values in the set? You don't really have anything that creates a group, other than the sum, and for that, you have a variable set of values.

K, rolled into a proc since it's easier to test. Put your data into a table called RTSource. This lets me add other data and play.

Proc:

Traffic isn't encrypted by default. If you used Always Encrypted, it would be, but I wouldn't do that. TDE doesn't encrypt traffic either.

You could use SSL, but really,...

It's a restriction because the keys are in different databases. I believe as a security precaution, you can't reference those keys from another db. I hadn't thought about this before,...

That's correct. Test for your situation, but you should be able to change the pwd in AD, change the pwd in Services applet (or both programmatically) and then restart SQL...

I'm with Jeff, why?

SQL Agent and PowerShell are orthogonal. They don't depend on each other. I can have an Agent Job using, or not using, PoSh. I...

+1, use guidance , and you will need to make some decision that is appropriate for your environment

Did you install the cert you created on the client? If so, you've enabled trust.

However, I do see your concern. The client should always go through the trust...

TDE should work on the subscriber. The data  comes over unencrypted, gets encrypted when written to disk. As mentioned, be aware of sizing.

How are you getting a running total when 104, 105, etc don't add to the total? Do you mean after a reset you stop?