First some background:
So currently in my organization we are running 5 physical servers.
1 is a SBS 2008 server running AD/Exchange 2007/File Server (Physical)
1 is a 2008 R2 server running Sage 50 and Sage ACT! (Physical)
1 is an ESXi 5.1 host running 3 VMs
-Server 2012 second DC
-Server 2012 File Server
-Server 2012 Remote Desktop/Remote App Server
1 is an ESXi 5.0 host running 1 XP VM (running on small R210 for 1 application that is going away. Box may be re-purposed, undecided)
1 is a new server that will be second ESXi 5.1 host running Server 2012 and Exchange 2013.
The Plan:
The goal is to migrate the mailboxes from Exchange 2007 on the SBS to the new Exchange 2013 VM, copy all files off the SBS to new File Server and lastly transfer all roles over to second DC and decommission/demote the SBS 2008 and re-purpose that box as the core for AppAssure. Also I will most likely P2V the Sage box and make it my last ESXi host (VMware Essentials so 3 hosts max).
The Issues:
The current issue is I have no real backup storage other than a couple of external drives that I currently am running plain old Windows Server backups onto. What and/or how should I go about specking out backup storage. We have a secondary site, our warehouse, where I am toying with the idea of putting a second core and storage for replication. My concern is that although it is offsite and would protect our data if lets say there was a fire in the server room, the warehouse is only a couple miles away so any catastrophic "Act of God" type of event would likely affect both locations. I have looked at cloud storage but backing up 2-3 TB of data to the cloud does not seem cost effective to me.
Some Notes:
I am not completely tied to AppAssure as I have not purchased it yet. I really liked the features, flexibility and scalability of the product. Also I have had a long running history with Dell and I found the licensing really great cost-wise for what we will be running end-goal which is 3 ESXi hosts. So if I understand it right I would only need 3 licenses for AppAssure, correct me if I am wrong here? I have seen similar discussions on these topics but there seem to be a lot of different opinions on backup and although I am open to other software's my purpose for this post is to address the best possible storage solution to go along with AppAssure or any other backup system.
Restraints:
Cost - Our company is a Small Business of only about 30-40 users, at the moment, and although we do pretty well we do not have $10,000 to spend on a total backup solution, at least not out the gate anyway.
Storage Capacity - We need to be able to backup 2-3 TB of data with some room to grow, no set time constraint on how long to keep backups but do like features of AppAssure that you can back up as little as 5 minute intervals and keep the backups however long you like, don't know what this may do to storage needed though, with deduplication I would not imagine it creates too big a footprint, but it is a valid concern.
Structure - We do have a location for off-site storage in-house but not sure if it provides us true disaster recovery in the event of true catastrophic "Act of God" type disaster. May want to augment this with some other off site storage even if it is removable disks I can take home. I live 50 miles away from my job so that at least is a little more protection.
Lastly I want to thank all the Spiceworks community in advance, by far the greatest group of IT professionals in the world as far as I am concerned. I am open to any ideas, suggestions and/or thoughts you all have on this topic.
P.S. Put this post in Backup as that is the focus of the discussion I think, Backup & Storage as a whole. I could have also placed this in a few other categories but I felt backup was best.
Thanks,
VericomITGuy