I believe it's a restart since it adds components to the instance files. However I haven't done this in awhile and can't be sure. I don't have a test instance...

You'd have to check the readme for each service pack/patch. There's not guarantee for these to be similar to each other.

for the most part, each has a setup program, which...

well, cow pies could be this: http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1837,149183-246207,00.html

Or this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/niffgurd/2798003172/

+1

Steve-3_5_7_9 (7/19/2013)

---

TempDB should be sized just like any other database. One should know their workload, or at least monitor the TempDB over several weeks to see what is a...

djackson 22568 (7/18/2013)

---

Unmentioned in the article is an issue the industry needs to address, which is that a lot of vendors develop software that requires a specific password in order...

Henry_Lee (7/18/2013)

---

I use PasswordSafe for work and like it. For home, though, I wanted something that could sync across devices as well as provide an offsite backup. I was very...

Careful, I like the ribbons.

you just might get...

why? The question isn't about performing every step. It's just to ensure you understand...

You may have the active portion of the log at the end of the file, which prevents it from shrinking. One of the things you can do is run some...

You might also track some of the existing waits with regards to IO. http://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/how-to-examine-io-subsystem-latencies-from-within-sql-server/

I suspect you had someone setting this up that didn't understand RPO/RTO and was just managing the log size, not worrying about recovery.

I'd make the logs more frequent.

LEFT, SUBSTRING, you need to limit the amount of data updated, as Eugene noted.

Have you setup clustering? If not, you might want to hire someone as a consultant to help you here.

It's unclear what you are trying to accomplish with a cluster. You...

Write it up and send it in