Reply #122: Cost is the main reason we went with Hyper-V

[ET Awful]

Because, you are absolutely correct, when deployed with all the common features it costs a bundle.

The applications we require MUST run in a Windows environment (we do not have the budget to convert all of our SQL apps to an Oracle environment (actually most of our apps aren't available in an Oracle version, the ones that are would cost us at least $100k to upgrade).

So, what we do is run the SQL server on a physical device which is backed up real time to a Sonicwall CDP (Continuous Data Protection, backs up every time a file is altered basically, keeps up to 15 versions in history). The virtual machines don't store any data, just program files, report forms, etc. so are backed up as part of a nightly backup routine and can be restored, for all intents and purposes" from any nightly backup at hand.

If we had an unlimited budget, we might have looked closer at VMWare, but it made no sense in our environment at this time (especially since our budget for the next year to two is tied up in doing construction on a new building that will consolidate the 4 buildings we currently occupy into one location).