Page 64 - Technology Plan for School Years 2017 to 2021

Storage and Access

Servers
The District’s Server team supports all servers and SAN infrastructure that host all student
and staff applications and data. This includes over 2100 virtual and more than 300 physical
servers in three datacenters and remote locations, including more than 180 school sites.
The team is responsible for maintaining all the infrastructure, including server hardware
refreshes every five years. The District’s server Infrastructure is over 95% virtualized and in
line with the District Green initiative, saving money on power and cooling in all server rooms
and locations.

Storage
Enterprise data storage continues to evolve, and currently resides in multiple types of
formats, sizing, and cost. The District supports multiple storage area networks (SANS) at
multiple locations, including a Business Continuity site for business critical applications, and
a Disaster Recovery site at Northwest Regional Datacenter (NWRDC), in the event of a
disaster in Palm Beach County, SAN technology affords the District a streamlined disaster
recovery process, allowing storage replication of all critical server and application data from
site to site. Over the next five years, the District will look to enhance or replace subsystems
to simplify systems administration, and to enhance performance by standardizing data
storage based on all application requirements. Research and feasibility studies will also be
done for leveraging of cloud based storage.

Disaster Recovery (DR)

The District’s computer systems are backed up on tapes and sent to an off-site professional
storage facility, where they can be retrieved in case of a disaster. The backup tapes follow a
standard schedule to ensure that both full and differential information can be retrieved.
Additionally, the District maintains two remote alternate DR sites where enterprise critical
business can be resumed, in the event of a disaster. The NWRDC site in Tallahassee, FL
hosts mission critical systems such as ERP, EDW, and critical infrastructure systems, in a
failover configuration ready for immediate use, if necessary. The other alternate recovery
site, SunGard, is based in Philadelphia. This site is used for mainframe disaster recovery
only, and is used for systems such as the TERMS Student Information System.

Over the next five years, the District will complete a Continuity of Operations Plan
(COOP) in compliance with state and federal guidelines. This effort will identify mission
essential functions which will, in turn, dictate the additional technology systems that must
be accommodated at the DR sites. These functions will then require continuity,
backup/recovery, and testing plans to ensure the survival of the District's business during
and after an emergency. Lastly, to ensure that backup systems are functional and available,

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