I would check first if DTC is running and configured for remote access on both servers.

This is an IOPS statistics for the data files volume from the existing production server:

Avg Disk Writes/sec 160

Avg Disk Reads/sec 240

And we do use backup compression with RedGate.

Thanks for your reply, Leo.

Total size for the database files is 70 GB, therefore space for backups is not an issue.

I'm going to check the number of IOPS on existing...

DAS is already purchased

Jeff, Thanks a lot for being so helpful.

Considering that we are going to triple the amount of RAM on a new box I’ll probably go with the fastest 8-core...

It's hard to compare with existing one that is 4MB and 3GHz. I couldn't even find 8-core of this speed.

If you had these options to replace existing one at...

Thanks a lot, Jeff.

One more CPU question. For SQL Server is it better to have more cache or faster speed?

For example Xeon X5672 12 MB 3.2 GHz vs E7-2820...

Current CPU utilization is averaging 30-35 %

It happens once in 3 days now during the pick hours. DBCC FREESYSTEMCACHE doesn't help at all, only reboot.

Opened a ticket with Microsoft but they have no idea what's...

Yes, it's 32-bit version, /PAE enabled, account has access to "lock pages in memory".

I think this is more related to "using functions on an indexed column in a where clause" than to actually collation:

WHERE clauses that perform some function...