mlorek (10/23/2014)
Yes we have the funding we actually have a rather large budget and get a educational price break that is amazing.
Ok cool, just wanted to check. Most educational organisations do get extensive price breaks as do students themselves.
mlorek (10/23/2014)
Being new to this I am overwhelmed with clustering, replication, AG, log shipping, mirroring etc and just want a solid way of replicating the db out for safe keeping but am getting so confused as to what the best option is, none of them seem very hard to setup I just want to pick the correct option.
Kevin has given you a wealth of info but just to add to that.
Don't be phased by clustering, AlwaysOn and mirroring actually reduce the need for shared storage and the absence of shared storage makes it easier to stretch a cluster geographically. I have used Log shipping very successfully to replicate large databases (100s GBs) from the UK to USA, it all depends on what you require, whether the secondary has to be readable or just sitting by and waiting (restoring\recovery).
Get yourself a plan and have it signed off by all business stake holders, this will involve some requirements analysis.
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