Software Companies Also Are Strengthening Their IT

[This is part of a special
Disaster Planning section from the November 2006 issue.]

Just as professional tax and accounting firms have increaed their investments
toward protecting their vital client data and preparing their practices for
disasters, so too have the software companies and other vendors who serve the
accounting and tax professions. As an example, Drake
Software, which produces the Drake Tax Software line, has recently created
a new data center to strengthen the company’s IT capabilities. Here is a rundown
of what Drake has done:

• The company monitors 161 devices in the Network Control Center (NCC)
• Maintains more than 100 Dell PowerEdge servers with:
  • dual CPUs
  • dual power supplies (each power supply is attached to a different 120
    volt circuit)
  • the operating systems are on mirrored hard drives and data is stored
    on multiple hard drives configured in a RAID 5 setup
• Drake has 24 other systems providing specialized services and Electronic
  Filing applications
• Many of these systems are either load balanced or running 2003 Cluster Server
  for redundancy and immediate fail over
• Hard drives of every critical server are imaged each night for quick recovery
  from hardware or Operating System failure.
• They mirror the EF servers to a remote facility
• They are in the process of bringing up a new DATA Center with 30 new systems
  for EF control. This will be a Hot Site for EF.