Sorry I didn't respond earlier, but I do appreciate your input. I was able to confirm those permissions but then determined the issue to be related to an entry for SQL auth credentials in the Registry of the primary servers. Even though our configuration showed that we were setup for Windows Auth to SQL, credentials were being passed for a non-windows account because a former team member had modified the registry when he originally installed our BES environment years ago.

Once I imported the data (including the credentials) from HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\SOFTWARE\Research in Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\Database into the standby servers our activations started to work again.

Thanks!