Reliant helps North American Title successfully move Data Center

The Challenge
North American Title Company (NATC), one of the nation's leading national title underwriters operating in 15 states, needed to relocate their main data center from Irvine, California to Dallas, Texas.

NATC needed a cost-effective solution that would guarantee no downtime of its most critical applications and databases. More importantly, NATC's biggest concern was the possibility of losing important data from an accident that could occur during the physical relocation of equipment from one location to the other.

The Solution
At first glance, simply overnighting the equipment via a reliable and insured courier would make sense. But what about worst-case scenarios, like unforeseeable accidents on the road or in the air during transport? For NATC, even the slightest exposure to these circumstances was risking too much.

After reviewing these risks, NATC determined that its only option to insure no loss of data was to duplicate all data prior to relocation by obtaining an identical storage system to mirror their existing EMC CLARiiON system. Unfortunately, the cost they were being quoted to buy this system from their existing vendor was well over $200,000.

After determining that purchasing a new system would be cost prohibitive, NATC reached out to Reliant Technology to explore their options. The Reliant team showed NATC a creative option that was unavailable from their existing vendors. Reliant proposed the idea of renting (for one month) the same exact EMC CLARiiON storage system NATC was planning to ship to Dallas. This would allow them to use the rental system in California to take over production and avoid any down time while they moved and installed their original system at their new data center in Dallas.

How It Happened
Once the rental unit from Reliant arrived to California, it was installed and synced up with NATC's existing storage array. After all data was successfully migrated and verified, NATC began running operations using the rented equipment before the data center relocation began. This allowed the team at NATC to ensure that all data was properly transferred and accessible. Once it was clear that the data transfer was successful, NATC shipped their original EMC CLARiiON storage system from Irvine, California to Dallas, Texas while the rented EMC CLARiiON system supported production operations.

Upon the original equipment's arrival to Dallas, NATC installed the EMC storage and began to synchronize the data after hours. After the data transfer was complete, NATC flipped the switch, and production operations began running in Dallas, Texas.

By using EMC rental equipment from Reliant Technology, NATC was able to transport its systems seamlessly from California to Texas without any downtime. After flipping the switch to Dallas, NATC powered off the rented equipment and the NATC Data Center Relocation was successfully completed. The rental equipment was then returned to Reliant.

The Results
For North American Title Company, partnering with Reliant Technology for assistance with its relocation plans proved to a smart financial investment. NATC wanted fast, cost-effective and secure support for its data center relocation that would not interrupt its day-to-day business operations. Reliant Technology met these needs, and then some.

Because of the cost-savings associated with Reliant Technology's plan, NATC reallocated the money it had designated for the duplicate EMC storage system and reinvested those funds into new servers for the Dallas data center.

By being creative and customizing a solution to address NATC's concerns and needs, Reliant Technology helped NATC deliver a seamless data center relocation with minimal downtime and zero data loss. Ultimately, the biggest benefit Reliant Technology delivered was peace of mind and you can't put a price on that.

For more information about North American Title Group, Inc., visit: www.nat.com.

For more information about Reliant Technology, visit www.reliant-technology.com