Best practice is going to be making a script for each server that specifies how it is done (out of the box this will be manual) and the storing that...

No. You need a server OS to do clustering and failover. XP won't let you do a cluster.

I think we have already established why his transaction log is filling up -- that reindex job. There is almost no question in my mind but that this is...

This looks like a VERY helpful article about your exact issue:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sql_protocols/archive/2007/05/13/sql-network-interfaces-error-26-error-locating-server-instance-specified.aspx

If the named instance has been moved to a static port, then no, the firewall could still be an issue. The firewall opens up both addresses and ports, and...

Perhaps DBCC UPDATEUSAGE might help?

OK, so we ARE trying to connect here. My guess is that default is on 1433 and that you don't have the SQL Browser running. Can you confirm...

By "remote in", do you mean RDP in? There's only one node to RDP into if so and therefore you are done. If you mean "connect", you've confused the...

Well, that was just an example. In that case the app design was screwed up from the start (i.e. creating app tables as temp tables, not using tempdb instead)....

Looks pretty clear to me -- The Agent started cleanly at 2:50 PM and was told to stop at 3:19 PM. It seems to have run for 30 minutes...

Are you sure that the activity is consistent between the two servers? Don't assume that only the app hits the DB. If someone is executing transactions, say from...

I almost couldn't do my job without Google. Every week I am finding some problem that I can solve in a matter of minutes/maybe an hour or less simply...

I don't have much Oracle experience so I have to drop at this point -- hopefully someone else will see this and jump in....

Been doing some research and found that using OA_Create and WMI together doesn't work. At some point you have to resort to OS-level activity that is blocked to me,...

No, I did not, but that was because some long unused COM knowledge came back to me, about the difference between CreateObject versus GetObject and how they are not equivalent....