Server: Hardware - id shoot for 12 core system with a minimum of 32Gb of ram, multiple SAS drives in raid array.
Primary OS: VMware ESXi server for server virtualization
Virtual OS 1: Windows SBS 2011 premium as host OS for AC
Virtual OS 2: a cloned copy of the above to prevent downtime and to test updates before full deployment . . .
I like the idea of no downtime. I have a physical backup server for my SBS 2008, and just did a bare metal restore to see if it works. But that does not achieve prevention of downtime.
How do you keep the copies of AC or entire SBS synced? Once a day backup and restore? (Takes too long). Decompress AC backup only? (Still takes time).
Thanks.
If you are going free/easy, I prefer CENTOS. it addresses your issue of how you run the VMs and provide other functionality.
In this case you run sftp services and copy up backups (DB and imported items) to the host server.
In the event that you need to swap/test/tinker, you can do that side-by-side, even running them at the same time and isolated using the host server.
N.B. you are going to need a certain level of comfort using CLI to do certain things.
