Start from cluster level, the cluster went down after site 1 had gone down? If not what was DBs and replica state, for automatic failover they should be Synchronized, you...

It will only restart this instance not the whole server.

BACKUP LOG [DBNAME] TO DISK = N'<<Drive withheld>>\DBNAME_LogBackup_2018-05-21_11-20-50.bak' WITH NOFORMAT, NOINIT, NAME =N'DBNAME_LogBackup_2018-05-21_11-20-50', NOSKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD, NORECOVERY , STATS = 5

Option NORECOVERY put database in restoring state, it is used when you want to get tail log backup, and is ON by default in...

Nice explanation with examples, in short Target = max memory setting in MSSQL I'm curious what this counter show when the max memory is left to default... must check on...

But then you should set static port. SQL also keep this dynamic port as long as another service don't steal it from SQL, only then SQL generate new one, but...

I did't see any best practise for SPN, but following the least rights best practise you should manually create SPN using setspn. You need to change SPN only after...

You can't. Create virtual machine with supported by MSSQL 2000 OS, it will be Windows 2003 for (MSSQL 2000 SP3) and install there.

There is no one correct answer, especially for VM. But for 4 VCPU you can safely start with maxdop=2 and Cost Threshold For Parallelism=30 and go up with Cost Threshold...

If you mean Power BI Report Server, then looks like it will work even with SQL 2008
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/report-server/system-requirements

A little strange behavior because Task Manager show 2 sockets :/
Look in error log for this information eg. SQL Server detected 1 sockets with 2 cores per socket and...

You are looking for push subscription, distributor needs connect to subscriber, no need for connection from subscriber to distributor. So in your case you put publisher and distributor on the...

NT SERVICE\MSSQLSERVER is a Virtual Accounts https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/database-engine/configure-windows/configure-windows-service-accounts-and-permissions?view=sql-server-2017#VA_Desc.
Changing this to Local System don't solve your problem and is a security risk, this is why virtual account was...

You are connecting to Virtual IP Address (VIP) that was specified during cluster installation. The Windows Server Failover Clustering take care of pointing this IP to active node, in your...

No way to set specific permission to trace files, permission for trace files are not inherited from folder, it is the same behaviour like for DB files.