Something to consider: moving to the cloud doesn't have to happen in one big step.

You could get an virtual machine set up, initially only for your database, and have your 2 hardware nodes + the VM load balanced. That way you can see if you like the performance etc of the VM. Over time you can then migrate more and more to the cloud.

Or not

Thanks for fixing the problem today/.

Its just so sad when DCUM goes out ...