Best Practice Question (clustering and remote locations access)

We have a SQL server here in Portland, we have a new office in Philadelphia
and we need to have both locations working off the same live data.
Regardless we will be clustering the SQL server here, but if we have a fibre
line (either will be DS3 45MB or OC3 155MB) connecting the two sites what
would be the best thing to do, have just the cluster here and phili works
off of that, or add another SQL server to the phili office and have it sync
with the ones here?
Just wondering pros and cons of both, what would be faster & more efficient
etc and wanted to get the opinions of some folks here. I'm not real
concerned about redundancy or uptime at this point, we will tackle that once
we get this first question decided on.
Thanks!
ScottHi
If your comms are reliable and have the capacity and response times then
maintaining the single cluster will be the simplest solutions.
Having an internet/intranet based application would be an alternative,
similar a citrix type solution may be another option to consider.
John
"Scott McDonald" wrote:

> We have a SQL server here in Portland, we have a new office in Philadelphi
a
> and we need to have both locations working off the same live data.
> Regardless we will be clustering the SQL server here, but if we have a fib
re
> line (either will be DS3 45MB or OC3 155MB) connecting the two sites what
> would be the best thing to do, have just the cluster here and phili works
> off of that, or add another SQL server to the phili office and have it syn
c
> with the ones here?
> Just wondering pros and cons of both, what would be faster & more efficien
t
> etc and wanted to get the opinions of some folks here. I'm not real
> concerned about redundancy or uptime at this point, we will tackle that on
ce
> we get this first question decided on.
> Thanks!
> Scott
>
>|||this might be a situation in which you would consider Merge Replication.
Not sure, it's a tough question.
Greg Jackson
PDX, Oregon