Thanks for the reply, Jonathan. I just finished reading the article and you're correct. These are completely separate
workflows and each workflow cannot be compared to which is more effective than the other since they serve completely different objectives. For us it would be in our best interest to stay with the current workflow with the enterprise geodatabase using sql server and hosted features through the server. Our only problem is the performance. Currently the sql server 2012 R2 is still being hosted on the old server but we removed all the GIS software and the performance is really bad. Bad enough that we can't edit in child versions where the ArcMap session immediately crashes.
Do you think it would be in our best interest to create another VM on the new server and host the sql server 2012 R2? Our server should have the resources and processor power to handle it.
Joe Borgione - Is this the workflow you're talking about when they isolate the different component to there own virtual machine?
*Edit - I talked with our IT admin this morning and it appears that they move the sql server virtual machine to the new server last week. I guess this puts us at square one for resolving this issue. If it's a network related issue I wonder if there is a way to troubleshoot it without having to spend thousands of dollars to possibly solve the issue.
New Server:
VM - 1
ArcGIS Server / Portal / web adapters
VM - 2
ArcGIS Data Store - Likely to not be used.
VM - 3 - proposed VM
Host SQL Server 2012 R2