IT company recommendation

[Pieman68]

toddler said:

We have 4 physical servers at the moment: Two AD domain controllers, an Exchange 2007 server, and a database server running SQL Server Express Edition. They're all running Server 2003. I'm going to do a bit of reading up on VMWare now, sounds promising. In terms of DR, what are the options if your site burns down or can't get access? And how do you back up VMs

Not sure I'd trust the speed or reliability of our internet connection enough to move everyting into a datacentre. We did install a cloud based MIS a few years ago and it was a huge mistake, slow as a week in the jail and killed productivity. Might look at hosted Exchange though.

Thanks for the info. Plenty of food for thought.

From a DR point of view, the best solution is usually a second site. As an example, one of my customers is a school that has 2 sites - the main server room has 2 hosts and a SAN, with a third server set up in a separate part of the school as a failover.

From a backup point of view - we tend to use Veeam for backup and replication and this, from what I can see, is the software of choice in a virtualised environment. There are loads of options for backup, whether these be on premise or cloud based. In larger environments something like disk replicated to disk then backed up to tape. Some hosted backup options will give the option of bare metal restore, allowing you to spool up VMs in the cloud in case of disaster

Lastly, from the point of view of line speeds - do you have ADSL links or a leased line into the premises. Speed issues in the cloud would suggest ADSL, which is not ideal as performance is not dedicated and can lead to slow downs (not my area of expertise but maybe down to contention rates). Leased line is always the best option but cost is often the issue from that point of view

This is a basic overview and there may be someone more technical who can advise better as I am but a lowly account manager but believe that this should help to an extent

[ArsE92]

Pieman68 said:

Alternatively, have you considered hosted environment so you move it all into OPEX rather than CAPEX - gets rid of the up front cost of the server environment (host the HW and get SPLA licensing) and makes you more resilient...

Consider this. The right solution would mean you don't need to change the desktops, saving you a lot of up-front cash.

[grmclean]

I've sent you an e-mail with some more details on Bridgeall
We would be able to help you with all aspects of this work and are Dell and Microsoft partners.

[toddler]

Pieman68 said:

toddler said:

We have 4 physical servers at the moment: Two AD domain controllers, an Exchange 2007 server, and a database server running SQL Server Express Edition. They're all running Server 2003. I'm going to do a bit of reading up on VMWare now, sounds promising. In terms of DR, what are the options if your site burns down or can't get access? And how do you back up VMs

Not sure I'd trust the speed or reliability of our internet connection enough to move everyting into a datacentre. We did install a cloud based MIS a few years ago and it was a huge mistake, slow as a week in the jail and killed productivity. Might look at hosted Exchange though.

Thanks for the info. Plenty of food for thought.

From a DR point of view, the best solution is usually a second site. As an example, one of my customers is a school that has 2 sites - the main server room has 2 hosts and a SAN, with a third server set up in a separate part of the school as a failover.

From a backup point of view - we tend to use Veeam for backup and replication and this, from what I can see, is the software of choice in a virtualised environment. There are loads of options for backup, whether these be on premise or cloud based. In larger environments something like disk replicated to disk then backed up to tape. Some hosted backup options will give the option of bare metal restore, allowing you to spool up VMs in the cloud in case of disaster

Lastly, from the point of view of line speeds - do you have ADSL links or a leased line into the premises. Speed issues in the cloud would suggest ADSL, which is not ideal as performance is not dedicated and can lead to slow downs (not my area of expertise but maybe down to contention rates). Leased line is always the best option but cost is often the issue from that point of view

This is a basic overview and there may be someone more technical who can advise better as I am but a lowly account manager but believe that this should help to an extent

More useful info. Thank you again.

We have a 500Mbps leased line with a 100Mbps leased line backup. Our firewall is a bit under spec'd so we're not getting the best throughput, which is another project I'm looking at.