Current environment is like this:
2 Exchange boxes running 2010 sp2 standard CAS/HT/MBX with DB1 and DB2
1 Exchange box running 2010 sp2 Enterprise CAS/HT/MBX the plan was to hold passive copies of DB3 and DB4 from our 2nd location (It was supposed to be installed as Standard and as Mailbox only)
2nd location
2 Exchange boxes running 2010 sp2 standard. CAS/HT/MBX with DB3 and DB=4
getting ready to add third box to hold passive copies of DB1 and DB2
Our databases are getting too big 500GB+ so replicating them is going to be a nightmare and if we ever need to repair it or move users to a new db because of corruption its going to be harder with larger DBs. So the plan was to create 12 smaller dbs 6 on each server. We ran into the problem with only 5 databases in standard edition.
So now we are at the crossroads. We have the option to upgrade/reinstall the standard edition servers to Enterprise. Or we could install a 4th server at each location and have two CAS/HT servers and 2 mailbox only servers per location. The CAS/HT servers would remain Standard and the mailbox servers would be Enterprise. (Licensing does not need to figure into the equation, we will get whichever licenses end up being the best solution)
Thoughts on best idea? I am leaning towards just upgrading/reinstalling to keep the environment simple, but I would like to have some other peoples opinions.
