First google result:

https://dashworks.atlassian.net/wiki/display/DWM/Installing+SQL+Server+Client+Connectivity+Tools

That task rebuilds every index, even if it doesn't need to be...

I bet you can do a full backup and restore in under 2 hours, run a dry-run to verify.

You'd just need to take the old server down, rename the new...

I think you need to provide more details, as there's no way you have 2 of the same file with the same name in the same folder...

There is already a...

Are you running the built in SSMS rebuild indexes maintenance plan task?

I'm assuming you have two copies of the same image with a different file name, is that correct?

If that's is correct, you'd have to do some sort of checksum comparison....

Active Secondaries: Readable Secondary Replicas (AlwaysOn Availability Groups)

Indexing

To optimize read-only workloads on the readable secondary replicas, you may want to create indexes on the tables in the secondary databases. Because...

Smart Business Intelligence Solutions with Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 (Developer Reference)

I've not seen a 2012 or 2014 book for BI/SSAS.

It sounds like you need to find out where the connection is coming from, check the default trace.

You'll either need to modify the connection string to point to a database...

If you get your users and logins setup so they're using the same SIDs on both production and dev, I don't think you'll have this problem.

...I'm thinking the restore is...

I don't follow the second question. For the first you can try to login to MSDN (with the company MSDN subscription account) and try to download.

Might be worth a shot to try triggering off of one of these: Alerting on Database Mirroring Events

...maybe one Session State changes?

Per-Service SID's?

Have you considered limiting what you're going to do to truncate only?

DBCC SHRINKFILE (file_name , TRUNCATEONLY)