@mmicha said in Where to start...:
The idea of the cloud is mostly due to a sister company shifting to INAP / Single Hop
Got it, so they are moving to a colo service that offers cloud services. There are definitely benefits (as outlined above) but there are also negatives to making this move.
From what you've listed I don't see anything that may have a major impact on the cost, besides possibly the file and sql servers.
Depending on the Cloud provider (INAP in this case) you may save some costs long or may end up stuck there with no easy means of moving your environment to another platform.
@IRJ is of the mindset that everything I say is stupid or insane but the consideration needs to be understood.
The DC's are completely minimal to operate, the tiniest of VMs run anywhere should suffice as they don't have any heavy workload.
The Fileserver depends, based on what kind of files you're hosting, cad files or word excel powerpoint type stuff. Then of course there is the issue of your internet connection to and from the Colo for this that has to be considered, on the LAN you're likely using 1GBe throughout (if not higher speeds). Is your ISP capable of supporting that (if so at what cost)?
With SQL I'd have to know how it's being used but this is also easily moved, and can be scaled.
I ask this only because I'm curious why bother using IIS today, company website or some other service? It might make sense to move this workload to a website hosting provider entirely.
I'm assuming WDS is for Windows Deployment Services - you may have major performance issues getting this to work over an internet connection.
What accounting system, quickbooks?
