So a few months ago we migrated our virtual environment (VMware) to new storage, servers, etc. - completely new infrastructure. We still own and have the two old hosts and the old storage array, an HP EVA4400 with 40TB raw storage space. Our current backup server is a separate physical box (Win Server 2008) with it's own 8TB array (HP MSA20 I think? I can't remember off the top of my head). The current backup server is where Veeam runs and stores its backups as well as where BackupExec writes out to tape (we have a tape library and send tapes off site for archival).
So. When we migrated off of the EVA4400 we did not have an active maintenance agreement, mostly because in 2013 the cost was $8k for the year and when it was time to renew suddenly the cost was $15k. So we weren't down for paying for that at the time knowing we were...