First American Corp. in Santa Ana, Calif., is relying on data center virtualization technologies to provide quick disaster recovery in the event of an earthquake.

The 22,000-square-foot data center, nearly two years old, is built on 30 columns incorporated with vulcanized rubber layers that work as seismic isolators designed to withstand an 8.5-magnitude earthquake. The isolators allow the entire structure to sway 24 inches in any direction horizontally, according to a company spokeswoman.

First American offered reporters a tour of its earthquake-hardened data center in Santa Ana, Calif., Wednesday, which will be matched soon by another near Dallas.

But even if the building were somehow destroyed, First American could depend on data center virtualization technologies to provide disaster recovery with the Dallas data center, officials said.

Virtualization for First American has resulted from a comprehensive $100 million IT upgrade first planned in 2004, which began with a data center consolidation and has led to voice-over-IP technology and other changes, said Evan Jafa, CTO of First American. The company had $8.5 billion in revenues in 2006, and provides business information to mortgage bankers and consumers on a range of topics.

Jafa estimated that the $100 million spent for consolidation and related technologies will be paid off by 2008 because of greater efficiencies in server utilization, lower long-distance costs with the use of VoIP, and cost reductions in many other areas.

Distributed systems across 2,100 global offices and 75 business units were consolidated into the two data centers, meaning there are now 4,500 servers in both locations, he said. About 1,200 of those are virtualized, Jafa said, which means they can be used for a range of applications and functions, instead of being dedicated for one specific purpose, which was traditionally the case.

The data center being built outside of Dallas will replace one in the city of Dallas and will also be equipped with virtual servers. If either site went down, both would be backed up with generators and other safeguards, but data could be instantly shipped to virtualized servers.

The virtualization process also means First American can adapt processes faster. Jafa said most of the networking upgrades were provided by Cisco, which is holding its annual Networkers Conference in nearby Anaheim, Calif., this week.

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