Getting ERROR 1045 (28000): Access denied for user even with proper setup and on different connections
The problem has been fixed.  It was not due to anything MySQL.

We have multiple DB servers, another one was assigned the same IP (10.0.0.201) and neither server picked up on it when doing an ifup.  This would explain why some worked and others didn't, as well as when we got MySQL responses when it was supposedly down.