Moving Thomson Reuters UltraTax to Azure: Tips from Sysadmins

One of the crucial things to remember is you really can't separate the UltraTax app from its data storage if you want decent performance. It's best to have both on the same server whenever possible. When deploying in Azure, consider using a dedicated drive for UltraTax data—this can help maintain speed and accessibility. You might want to experiment with storing the applications on user workstations while keeping the client files on the Azure server, as the files are typically quite small and this could improve performance.

From what I recall, Practice CS data is still hosted by the vendor. So, it's important to check if it can be set up entirely in the cloud or if you need some on-prem resources. Also, it's totally possible to run Practice CS on your own servers, but plan ahead on your server's capacity.

I've been managing systems at a large CPA firm and have hands-on experience with the Thomson Reuters software for over 14 years. If I were doing this migration, I’d recommend setting up a Remote Desktop Services (RDS) environment with at least two servers. One server can run the RDS roles and applications, while a separate SQL server handles the Practice database. For smaller teams (like under 5 users), you might get away with running everything on a single server at first. Just be cautious about potential future headaches if your database grows, as keeping RDS and SQL on separate systems can save a lot of trouble later on.