Thanks, Brent. I will keep my eyes open.... in the interim, let's hope she doesn't trip up too badly. ;-)

Fortunately, i've got two high-end resources side by side... one for prod, and one to play in. Unfortunately, i need to deploy asap. cross your fingers.... and pls let me know if you hear of anything.

Thanks again.

Hello Brent. I'm at the last reason you posted..... and truly hoping not to do it wrong. I agree - partitions are fabulous in terms of performance and usability of VLDB's! But, I haven't touched them hands-on since early v2000 (very problematic, very high maintenance). Right now, I am trying to construct a daily partition strategy for v2008, where the data is massive and more than warrants it. Daily partitions... I'm reading everything i can get my hands on; ie., 'best practices suggest as many filegroups as you have partitions'.... curious, do you know where I may find an example of a daily strategy (function, scheme, etc.)?