Just wanted to drop a note in here about how to automate the "Pause actions of all alerts" setting. The value is in the the SQL database in the Settings table. A query like this will set it:
query = "UPDATE Settings
SET CurrentValue = '1'
WHERE name like 'Pause%'"
Invoke-Sqlcmd -Query $query -database SolarWindsOrion
Then set it to 0 when done. This can be done from the server with the SQL database as a Powershell script/scheduled task. Use the System account to run the task.
Hope this saves someone a headache.