The column type will be coded with a 'H' to indicate it is a header record. All records that follow the Header record are assumed to be detail until...

bitbucket: I'm trying to whittle down what to include in the reports, but I'm most certain to use Excel for being able to generate quick charts and such.

I have...

Dundas does have some great looking gauges. Unfortunately, it's out of my price range. SQL Health and History canned reports are decent but they lack anything really management...

Let me refocus you all on the question. I know how to get the information, I was looking for ideas on presenting it in a fashion that is meaningful....

I'm focusing right now on backups, capacity, CPU, replication, event log exceptions, job history, and various trends.

I guess I was more curious if anyone actually has to do this...

It seems to me as though you might consider a failover cluster. Availability seems to be your concern. You can always Cluster your Pub and scale out...