I had a meeting with a customer and they are asking for redundancy and high availability to their network. We've recently had a couple of downtime due to external consultants and factors. Business needs have increased 100 fold over the past 2 years so IT systems need to be highly available. I'm trying to reuse the hardware and software that the customer has invested about 2 years ago as much as possible but considering costs, it might be wise to completely replace them. This is what i'm thinking of doing and would like your recommendations :
In the customer's office, I would put 2 new physical hosts and have VMWare installed with vMotion but no shared storage. I've read that vSphere 5.1 supports vMotion without shared storage. I haven't had a chance to read in detail how that process works but I think that both hosts must be in the same location. In order to protect the systems, I plan also on replicating the VMs to a datacenter. Can vMotion without shared storage work over WAN to datacenter?
In the office:
·The first host with the following VMs: DC, MS Exchange, File sharing.
·The second host with the following VMs: DC, SQL, TS.
In the datacenter, I would have a single host with the following VMs: DC, MS Exchange, TS.
I plan to have the VMs backed up from one host to the other in the office at regular intervals and also have all the VMs backed up to the Datacenter.I want to avoid a NAS to reduce complexity but that would definitely be an option.
We want all the emails coming into the domain to be received at the Datacenter then forwarded to the Exchange at the office.An MS Exchange in the office high usage want it to be as fast as possible.Emails received and treated are very time sensitive.
I thought of having everything moved to the datacenter but if the link between the datacenter and the office were severed, the office would be completely non-operational. Customer said flatly no to that. Right now, customer sometimes uses RWW that comes with SBS2008.If I were to switch to Windows 2012 STD, they would require a TS server to connect to the office.Customer will also have a satellite office soon so it will also require a connection to a TS server at the office (CRM apps is not designed to work over WAN).The TS that is in the Datacenter will be accessed in case the office is non-operational.
Does this sound like a solid plan to assure a good level of redundancy and high availability against:
·Any localized (within the office) hardware failures
·Total office failure
·Accessibility for a satellite office
If this looks ok to you gurus, then I will follow up with a post on the type of software, hardware and physical links I plan on using.