>Hosted servers are a good way to go IMHO as it removes the need to host hardware on a local network, provide all the security infrastructure, manage uptime etc. You're still responsible for all the software including Windows setup (which is automated to get up and running in about 10 minutes) though. The other advantage is that most cloud solutions these days allow for easy automatic backups or at it's simplest snapshot captures of a VM in place which is a great way to ensure you have a valid backup and quick restore if the server blows up or is compromised by a some attack.

>But it depends on your budget I suppose. Performance wise getting hardware that is equiv or better than what you have is relatively cheap. But hard disk space can get pricey.

>For example, I use a single Windows VM plus a separate backup VM for file storage and backups and I pay ~$90 a month. That hosts 25 sites some of which are quite busy and that machine isn't even pushing 30% CPU utilization on average and no more than 75% on peak.

>Terminal Server logins are different though and tend to be more resource intensive but given you had a 2012 server I'd bet even mid-level VM hardware with 4 processors would be on par with that physical setup. Best thing to do is set up a test VM and experiment to see what you get. Most providers have a free trial period or at minimum you can set up a server, run it for a few days and kill it when done.


>I use Vultr for my VM provider and I've been very happy especially with performance and reasonable pricing. Not the lowest but they have good Windows support and the perf of VMs is excellent especially compared to similar solutions on the big names like Azure or AWS both price wise and for what they call comparative hardware (which is impossible to compare really due to differences in types of HW). They also have dedicated physical co-located servers in facility which are not much more expensive which can be useful perhaps for use TS style local CPU loads.

Thanks for your extensive and generous response Rick - very much appreciated. I will investigate Vultr further. Am I correct in understanding that we will need to provide the Windows License for the VM?
best regards, Andy