I am looking for some help. I realize that there are a lot of forum discussions out there but most are fragmented and old. I would have to piece together all of the "solutions" and also try to find the equivalent technology of a 2006 SAN or backup solution.
Here is my story. I work for a small bank out in Leavenworth Kansas. We currently employ the one application, one server methodology. We have 3 branches. The home branch has 8 servers (2 currently virtualized with ESXi 3.5 u4 on DAS) The other two branches have one server each. I believe I have come to the conclusion that I will get vSphere 4 essentials plus. From my understanding that gives me 3 server licenses. I will have two servers at the home office and one at a branch location for DR. My budget of course as a small business is not huge and so having two sans is almost out of the question. I don't even know if a SAN is the way to go but for a growth perspective, I can't see how to do it any other way. I also need a good backup solution for MS SQL and Exchange. and then replicating though replication seems like an easy choice depending on whether or not I get two SANS or I get one SAN and a NAS for the branch.
Anyways, my question is how have other small businesses done this? What do you solutions look like and are you happy with them? These deal more with the method of implementation. I figure that its really not a HUGE difference whether or not I go IBM, hitachi, equallogic/dell, emc, netapp ,etc. This will be a huge help for me to understand how things work and how they are implemented in real life scenarios. Thank you for any information provided about your current setups!
Mark Breaux
Edit: 8 servers are all windows 2003 but upgrading during this process to 2008. They include exchange/sql/dc/antivirus/websense/loan processing software. Thanks!
