Are you looking for a way to be notified should a failover occur, like from e-mail?

I agree with you, giving them the password defeats the whole concept of TDE. I would question why do they need the password? Why not your group maintain...

If the log shipping is staying in sync, the errors you are seeing may not be cause for alarm. When you run these queries on the primary/secondary, does everything show...

I have done this one time with a vm - You could create the new server (with new hardware) with a temporary name, install sql, then either restore or attach...

Right, not the login you are using to login to the sql server to run the install, but, was referring to setting the logins for the sql services inside the...

I would un-install what you were able to install (add/remove programs), if anything, reboot, and re-start the 2014 installation from scratch. Instead of using the default logins for the...

Pretty sure there is not a "downgrade edition" option in setup only an "upgrade edition" one. You could possibly do a side by side migration and restore the databases...

With regard to the login messages you are not wanting to see in the Sql Server Error log - while in SSMS, rt click on the sql instance>Properties>Security and change...

You should not have to as long as the 2014 installation was successful. I would check the numerical part of the version installed (Select @@version) and cross check that...

I searched on your error, and I think is is pointing to a permission issue, please make sure your account, or the account you are accessing the server with the...

There is a free downloadable program from MS called "Kerebos Configuration Manager", if you search on it, you should be able to download it and run it against your server(s)...

You could set up log shipping for the databases from your 2008 clustered instance over to the new 2014 vm instance. Then, at cutover time, stop all applications pointing...

The retention time to keep backups on disk is embedded within the backup script which Ola provides - Example - sqlcmd -E -S $(ESCAPE_SQUOTE(SRVR)) -d zUTILITY -Q "EXECUTE [dbo].[DatabaseBackup]

Thinking a VM should work fine for a test server assuming that vm is equipped enough RAM and cpus to run all the applications going on it. Of course,...

What will be the effect of index reorganization to the users?

The reorgs, while they are running, should go un-noticed by the users (application). You can even stop a rerog...