Is it mandatory to have the SQL on physical server? I understand that for best performance, MS SQL needs to be on a physical server but how can we covert that onto a virtual machine specifications for Laserfiche. I need to cater for high availability and backup and having 2 physical servers dedicated to MS SQL will complicate the setup and increase costs.

It is not mandatory to have SQL installed on a physical but, as you mentioned, having SQL server installed on its own physical server will provide the best performance. If running SQL on a Virtual Machine, we recommend that SQL Server should be the only application running on that VM instance. More information on virtualizing Laserfiche products can be found in thiswhite paper. In regards to running Laserfiche in a high availability environment, we have anotherwhite paper about setting up failover clustering for Laserfiche.

2.      The prospect is also working towards his DR site and expects a RPO of 4 hours. We normally use visionsolutions Doubletake replication software to replicate the VMs.

Since we have a RIO solution and unlimited servers, we could setup a Laserfiche server and MS SQL server on the DR site. Then I believe that we would only need to replicate the Laserfiche Volumes and Laserfiche MS SQL database files to the DR setup.

a.      Please validate the above approach and provide your recommendations or better alternatives.
At the bare minimum you will only need to back-up the Laserfiche volume files and SQL database, however if you want to decrease the amount of down time you should also backup the Repository Directory created for your repositories as well as the License Manager Database. You will also have to backup other files depending on the Laserfiche products you are using. A list of Laserfiche components to backup can be found in thiswhite paper.

b.     The other challenge is how can we ensure that the volumes and database are in sync. It is expected that Laserfiche will be heavily used with multiple workflows running in parallel.

During normal operations you should not encounter any problems with the volumes and databases being out of sync. In the case that you perform a migration or if the backup of the volumes and repository were done at different times, you can use our Volume Consistency Checkerto check if the volumes and database are in sync.

c.      Is case of a disaster, is it possible to resume the workflows from the disaster point/ last replication state on the DR server?

Yes, you can resume workflows as long as the Workflow Server’s SQL database has been properly backed up. The Workflow SQL Database tracks the status of all workflows so after performing a backup you will be able to resume workflows that were running.

3.      Is there a template that you can share to draft Laserfiche project plans and analyse/set the scope of work for Laserfiche projects (Avante, RIO, Workflow). We wish to standardise on Laserfiche approach and methodology.

We do have a template that we use to draft Laserfiche project plans as they are created on a case by case basis.