When designing the IT infrastructure (servers, storage, and network) of small remote offices, infrastructure architects of large enterprises are often faced with the question, what is the best IT infrastructure solution for remote sites? Low-cost, simple, secure, and easy to support solution always come to mind, but positive end-user experience in terms of network and application performance, and user friendliness should also be in the top priorities when building the infrastructure.

Most small sites just need access to enterprise applications and to file and print services. Network infrastructure definitely needs to be built – such as the site’s local area network (LAN), wireless access points, wide area network (WAN) to connect to the enterprise data center, and access to the Internet. The bigger question though is: should servers and storage be installed on the site?

There are a lot of technologies such as WAN accelerators and “sync and share” applications that will forgo installing servers and storage on the remote sites without sacrificing positive end-user experience. For instance, Riverbed WAN accelerator products tremendously improve performance access to files and applications from the remote sites to the enterprise data center.  These products can even serve up remote datastore for VMware farms. “Sync and share” applications are dropbox-like applications (such as EMC Syncplicity). Enterprises can build a storage as a service solution in their internal infrastructure. This will eliminate the need to install file servers or storage appliances on the remote sites.

The decision to “install servers” or “go serverless” at the remote sites still depends on many factors. They should be dealt with on a case by case basis and should not rely on a cookie cutter solution. Some of the criteria to consider are: the number of people at the sites and the growth projection; the storage size requirement, available WAN bandwidth, the presence or absence of local IT support, office politics, and country/region specific regulation for data to remain local. If these issues are factored in, a better solution can be designed for remote offices.