This is good stuff, thanks for posting it Kim. It always amazes me how many SQL Servers are not monitored for even simple things even though it is extremely simple...

Here is a blog posting on encryption from SS2005 which still applies and is (in my opinion) a great walk-through on certificate based encryption (passphrase encryption is pretty straight-forward and...

The error is indicating it is using Named Pipes so be sure that protocol is enabled in Configuration Manager. You also mention connecting via Management Studio, but if you are...

Hey Mark,

If you created the user via SSMS then this probably isn't the issue, however still something to check. Since login failures are logged by default, are you seeing the...

One thing to make sure of is that the database principal has explicit Connect granted to it at the database level. It depends on how the principal was added to...

Is the user name going to be determined by the database name or is there anything else that is preventing you from simply creating the user in model so that...

There is a Run As setting for the job step, but that would just muddy the authentication waters here. I would recommend creating a Windows account for the SQL Server...

If you are using Execute As and are accessing resources outside of the current database (all mail items in this case) you will need to set the trustworthy setting for...

Cool, at least it is logging the issue. I would guess that the job step/ proxy is not configured correctly so the job step is defaulting to the security under...

To get some more detail, you can query msdb.dbo.sysmail_mailitems to see what the result was and to get the send_request_user to see what authentication is being used when called, etc.

I don't beleive that there is any easy way to speed up the creation although if you have a different IO path that you can use, that would help. Also,...

If this is an email being sent as part of the alert, you should make sure that the Mail session information is configured correctly by going into the properties of...

For reading the error log you can use the following:

Exec master.dbo.xp_readerrorlog 1, 1, 'search string1', 'search string2'

The first parameter (as I am sure you know) is the log number, the...

Cool, glad you got it working.

The folder might be shared, but you need to put the path to the shared folder in the form of \\<ServerName>\<Sharename> in the path for the snapshot directory.