National Van Lines (NVL) is a national moving and relocation company based in Broadview, IL. The company has agents in 48 states and service partners around the world. Services include residential and commercial moving and storage domestically and internationally. NVL is employee-owned and operated.

THE BUSINESS CHALLENGE

As a national moving and relocation company, NVL needed to strengthen its business continuity, ensuring uninterrupted availability to clients and bolstering its competitive edge. NVL was vulnerable to frequent and lengthy power outages caused by heavy rain and power grid issues in the Chicago market that took the servers offline for days.

NVL recognized the necessity for a robust disaster recovery solution and a comprehensive business continuity plan to ensure swift recovery in the event of a disruption. Additionally, the company’s remote workforce required thorough preparation and clear directives to navigate worst-case scenarios effectively.

To attain the necessary level of business continuity, NVL sought to migrate its infrastructure to the cloud for enhanced reliability. However, finding a suitable cloud solution proved challenging, as few options met the company’s requirements, and securing expertise for implementation was difficult.

THE SOLUTION

IBM Power Virtual Server (VS)
IBM Power VS is a family of configurable multi-tenant virtual IBM Power servers with access to IBM Cloud services. With IBM Power VS, organizations gain reliable failover solutions for backup, high availability, and disaster recovery in the cloud. IBM Power VS enables organizations to move workloads to the cloud and manage them across a hybrid cloud environment.

IBM Cloud Object Storage
IBM Cloud Object Storage is a highly flexible and reliable managed data service on IBM Cloud, offering an alternative to block and file storage. IBM Cloud Object Storage provides rapid recovery through the cloud, as well as protection from data loss and compromise.

Precisely Assure MIMIX
Precisely Assure MIMIX delivers high availability and disaster recovery for IBM i. The solution provides scalable, real-time replication for promoting business continuity across cloud and on-premises environments. Through replication, Precisely Assure MIMIX helps to eliminate downtime and data loss by enabling failover to another site within hours instead of days.

Mainline Professional Services
Mainline provided the following professional services, helping NVL to achieve a resilient, highly available system environment:

• Assessment and advisement of optimal cloud/hybrid cloud solutions
• Education on how to use IBM solutions, including the IBM Power Virtual Server
• Implementation

THE RESULTS

National Van Lines has bolstered its business continuity strategy with replication and disaster recovery solutions deployed on IBM Cloud Power Virtual Server. With a newfound confidence in its approach, NVL finds the combination of IBM Cloud infrastructure and Precisely Assure MIMIX software replication to be flexible, reliable, and user-friendly. This robust disaster recovery strategy ensures NVL’s operations remain resilient and uninterrupted, leveraging IBM Cloud’s datacenters for secure replication.

Now, having moved to a more robust cloud IaaS model and eliminating the local power grid unreliability issues, the team at National Van Lines can sleep well at night. Moving to virtual tape backups in IBM Cloud saves NVL the cost of maintaining physical media and an on-site facility for backup. Using IBM Cloud Object Storage for tape storage archiving and Precisely Assure MIMIX for replication has provided NVL much faster recovery than the old method of restoring from physical tape.

Mainline provided comprehensive education to the NVL team on maximizing the benefits of IBM Power VS and IBM Cloud services. Through a collaborative effort with IBM Expert Labs, Mainline seamlessly implemented the solution, sparing the company from encountering a steep learning curve. Greg Moore, VP of IT at National Van Lines, says, “Mainline was great about explaining things to us. They spoke to us in our language, in a way that we could relate to. It gave us a great sense of comfortability.”

Throughout the engagement with Mainline, NVL gained valuable insights into cloud technology and the capabilities of IBM. With access to expert support from IBM throughout the migration process, NVL developed a newfound trust in the cloud. As a result, NVL is exploring a portfolio approach to cloud adoption, envisioning seamless integration between on-premises resources, IBM Cloud, and other cloud platforms.

Commenting on NVL’s ongoing plans for the cloud, Greg said his company wouldn’t hesitate to call on Mainline “because they have already proven themselves.”
Greg praised the solution Mainline provided, saying, “It’s solid. We’re confident in it. It’s secure and it’s reliable, so much so that we’re now going through the same process with the National Forwarding business unit. It works, we like it, and we’re going to do it again.”

The relationship between National Van Lines and Mainline has been strengthened by this successful engagement. Of Michael Miller, Sr. Systems Engineer (IBM Champion) at Mainline, Greg says, “Everybody on the team appreciates Michael and his expertise and likes working with him. He’s been extremely helpful.”