High-availability solutions for Hyper-V

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I am planning different high-availability scenarios for a customer, with a new server (either SBS Std or Server 08 Std + hosted Exchange) and I imagine it will be based around Hyper-V. The customer is suggesting having a secondary server that they can fail over to. I'm looking for a solution that will replicate the Hyper-V setup on the primary server in real-time onto a secondary stored in a separate secured location in their warehouse (LAN link, it won't be geographically separate). The solution should be as easy to fail over as possible, even to the extend that one of their (reasonably tech-minded) staff could perhaps perform the operation; this part isn't a critical requirement but would be nice to have.

I have had a quick look and am looking at DoubleTake, SteelEye, ViceVersa Pro, but would like to hear what some of you have worked with in this environment.

Sometimes I think that the cost of this can be prohibitive versus a 2-Hr response, 5-yr warranty with the likes of Dell, and redundant disks and power supplies built in. The customer will be purchasing a new server anyhow and all of this will be in place (with the exception of changing the 2-Hr to either 4-hr or NBD). Your opinions welcomed

 

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Sorry, I meant that it would be SBS hosted in Hyper-V, running on its own or as a guest of Server 2008.
After thinking a bit, even if it was something that is replicated every hour, and they manually fail over to it, they still lose an hour's work, and there's the issue of bringing back that "hour's work" (+emails if appropriate) when they bring the main server back online. So I guess the HA has to be in realtime or not at all.

Backups would be separate from all of this I understand, I have that bit covered.

All of this for a company that has about 15 client machines. Probably looking at an improved warranty to reduce the complexity of everything.

Thanks.

 

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Some good points.
Skidi - SBS Premium does indeed come with a licence to run Server 2008 as the host, but not Standard.
Also the idea of VM's was just to allow for easier replication if we were going down that route.

Anyhow after a further meeting the arrangement is to go with hosted Exchange for a start; I am going to look at fixing up the config of their existing SBS 2003 to improve a few things in the short term, and once the hosted email has settled in, look at options for the server.
They are a courier - they need to have access to the server all the time in order to print manifests and get their vehicles out the door as soon as possible. If they can't access their system to print the manifests, they said that planning alternative routes to get stuff shipped for the same delivery time promised can cost them £1000's sometimes. They have a bespoke system running off SQL Express at present.
HA for SQL Express is perhaps achievable with a few hacks but it's not a complete solution. Adencool's second suggestion sounds perfect except for the SQL side of things, and to bring SQL clustering in is just not going to be cost-effective. Your recommendation of Altaro has been noted - it looks great.

It's looking like a single Server 2008 solution, running in Hyper-V, that say replicates the VHD changes using Altaro to a NAS every 15 minutes; if there's a major failure of some kind, at least the VHD is there to mount off a spare machine and keep them going until the primary machine is sorted. Seems the most cost-effective plan for a business of this size.
(Backups again would be running to separate, rotated disks)