Thank you.. was new to these servers, figured that the clustered resources Windows and SQL were down, reboot of both nodes resolved the issue

thank you,

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought in linked server properties -> security options -> query timeout '0' meant unlimited.

I did notice another thing -...

the connection is made using

'be made using this security context' option. The login has database ownership on production

The other parameters of the linked server connection are -

It is...