EMC Replication for Branch Offices

Hi,

First post here so be gentle.

A year or so back we went through a storage refresh and implemented a VNXe 3150 with Local Protection Suite, Application Protection Suite and Remote Protection Suite.

I'm now looking at a project to introduce caching of data at branch level to aid in survivability and performance.

I want to use DFS Namespaces to abstract network shares from the logical reference points and I also want a replication technology with a little more intelligence than DFS-R. So a few questions.

Can the EMC kit manage the replication underpinning the DFS Namespace(s)?

Can it manage replication to other vendors storage?

I have MPLS to all branches and intend to put a branch office windows domain server for local file, print, netlogon and WSUS services.

Branch data storage requirements aren't huge and neither is the amount of data as our primary operational tool is a RemoteApp delivered ERP solution which has it's own document management built n to it's databases. This is the reason why I ask about other vendors storage as putting a VNXe appliance in each branch would be massive overkill.

Happy to hear thoughts on this or if any community members have implemented a similar solution what you did?

Cheers

Sean