Options for moving on-premise Sage 50 CA to virtual private server e.g. Azure?

Question

We currently have an on-premise installation of Sage 50 CA. We're in the process of moving most of our infrastructure to Microsoft Office 365 and would like to no longer have any on-premise server computer. For the near future, the Sage 50cloud offering is not an option. 
 
 I'm a sysadmin but I'm not expert in the architecture of Sage 50 CA. I can think of several possible ways to reconfigure Sage 50 CA so that an on-premise server is no longer needed. I'd like some feedback on which one(s) are feasible. 
 
 My (very limited) understanding is Sage 50 CA is a "client-server" application, with separate "server" and "workstation" components. Assuming that's true, one thing I don't know is how much network bandwidth is required between the workstation(s) and the server. Some CS applications are "chatty" and require significant bandwidth for adequate performance. This is not an issue with a typical on-premise installation on a gigabit LAN, but it might be if the server is in the "cloud" and the workstations are still local. 
 
 Do Sage data file(s) have to be stored on the same host that runs the server component? One question that has been asked is whether Sage data files can be stored on Microsoft OneDrive. 
 
 We're considering setting up a private server on a cloud service such as Microsoft Azure. If we did that there are at least a couple of scenarios:

Server component + data files on Azure, workstations still local. Connection via VPN. This would require traffic between the server and workstations to go through the VPN, which will be much slower than the current gigabit LAN. Uplink speed would probably be 50Mbps or lower 
 Cloud server configured as an RDS server. All Sage components installed on the cloud server. This should work fine as long as full product installation for multi-user on an RDS server is supported - can someone confirm?

Any comments or real-world experiences appreciated. 
 
 Thanks in advance.

RandyW · Accepted Answer

Al Doman said: AFAIK MySQL only allows one database server instance to open and have control of a database's files (i.e. exclusive access). If an instance on a server opens a database located on that server, another instance running on a client can't open those same data files. 
 I don't work for Sage, so I can only see how the thing behaves, rather than how it's actually assembled. 
 Right, there is exclusive access. The raw DB file is never accessed across a network, only by a DB instance running on the server with the disk. 
 A process.pid text file is created in the .SAJ (data) folder when the first connection is made . It contains the process ID of the MySQL database daemon. If it isn't there, the Connection Manager knows there are no existing connections so it must first start an instance of the MySQL daemon. One OS is in full control the disk, therefore no other copy of MySQL can access the data. There is absolutely never a direct client read/write connection to the MySQL INNODB file (ibdata1). 
 Each workstation's default installation gets all the software - both client and server, but the workstation's MySQL daemon only starts and runs if accessing data on the local workstation's filesystem - even if there were no other computers in the world, the Sage 50 client would still communicate from the local client to the local server via specific TCP/IP ports. 
 There are no 'local' connections via shared memory or direct to disk. If the local MySQL daemon is disabled, for example, the client will be unable to open a local 'company file' but can access data on a server with no problems. 
 The Connection Manager literally manages the connections but it doesn't handle company data itself- it seems aware of all the existing connections (check File | Properties in multi-user) and the status of company data on the server, probably in a temporary table in the database itself, I can't say . 
 Whether the first connection or not, it will pass the an available port to the client on log-in (assuming the database isn't in 'single-user' mode, and there are licenses available, etc) 
 There is only one type of client connection to the INNODB data file via MySQL, all the data is fetched using ODBC queries against the MySQL DBMS instance. The requests and data get to the right place because they are made from different IP addresses and on different ports. 
 I hope that helps, It could be better organized and maybe have a flowchart. The important thing is that Sage 50 always, only, runs in client-server mode, never in a direct file-access mode.

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Options for moving on-premise Sage 50 CA to virtual private server e.g. Azure?

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