Is there anyway to introduce a delay before connecting to the database on startup? We have an odd situation on one of our servers where if it restarts umbraco fails to start because the database is not yet ready when it attempts to connect

You can make one windows service depend on another so it won't start until the other one has started. So for example you could make the Web Service (W3SVC) depend on SQL (MSSQL i think)

sc config W3SVC depend=WAS/HTTP/MSSQL$SQLEXPRESS

(you have to include the services that it is already dependent on (which is WAS/HTTP when i checked) obviously backup test etc. !