Also, large databases can be migrated with minimal downtime if you do it in two steps:

Before taking down any applications, make a full database backup of your source...

The query shows that the "index name" here is actually retrieved from the "name" column in sys.indexes, which all documentation says, yes, this should be the name of the index. But...

Yup, but also two different index id's and therefore two different indexes - they also have different page counts.

Hmmmm...

Just for the record, I agree 100% with Jeff on the basic point that the age of your existing statistics has precisely nothing to do with whether you need to...

You generally DON'T want more than one backup job for the same logs - that will just mess with your log chain and make restores a whole lot harder.

So,...

System DBs simply aren't synchronized in AlwaysOn - each participating node has it's own SQL Server instance with it's own system DBs and any changes made therein will affect only...

It's usually recommended to leave this on, yes. 
While it is generally not a very good thing to have your SQL Server immerse itself in an update statistics job right...

10s of GB of DB set to autogrow in 1 MB increments...?
Yup, that's definitely an epic fail on any sanity check, but of course, this will only actually make...

Typically, the MSDB can grow large over time if there are no maintenance jobs in place to clean up old job history and backup history records. And yes, if these...

Well, as has already been stated, the SMK is used to secure all other keys on the server.
Which means that if you have ANY encryption ANYWHERE in your...

Actually, if you're not doing log backups, then you MUST not be using Full or Bull-logged. 

SQL Server will let you do it, but in this setup, your transaction logs...

Yup. Log backups are not supported in SIMPLE recovery mode because that involves simply overwriting the log entries as soon as you’re done handling transactions and writing the data back...

Yes, it appears you do have some sort of third party tool making full backups you have not been aware of, so your number 1 priority should be to get...

You'll need to talk to SQL Server, not just look at the files.
Basically, there is no way to give you any straight answers based on the information posted above...