How a Construction & Quarrying Company Cut Scale Downtime from a Full Day to 15 Minutes

With no native failover in their construction application, the company built their own disaster recovery solution using GoodSync — protecting millions in contract revenue at remote quarry sites

Industry
Construction & Quarrying
Company Size
17,000+ daily truck transactions
How a Construction & Quarrying Company Cut Scale Downtime from a Full Day to 15 Minutes

KPIs Achieved

  • 15 min
    Recovery time at scale sites

    Down from a full day or more — secondary workstations are now live in under 15 minutes if the primary scale fails

  • 24/7
    Scale uptime maintained

    Scales processing thousands of trucks per day stay operational, protecting government and vendor contracts from costly penalties

  • 5
    Support tickets

    Only 5 support tickets raised over five to six years of production use — every issue traced back to operator error, not product failure

About the Company

The company is a construction and quarrying business whose primary revenue depends on truck scales at remote quarry sites. Customers drive in to purchase rock, soil, and other materials, and the scales must run continuously. With thousands of trucks crossing each day — many under government and vendor contracts requiring priority service — even minutes of downtime can trigger financial penalties or contract loss. The Manager of Infrastructure oversees servers, storage, disaster recovery, change management, and SQL servers across all sites.

The Challenge: Scale Downtime Could Cost Days — and Contracts

With no failover built into their construction application and some sites hours from headquarters, a single scale failure meant a full day of lost revenue and manual operations.

  • Network latency icon

    No Native Disaster Recovery in the Application

    The construction application managing scale transactions was never designed with failover in mind. There was no built-in redundancy — if the primary workstation failed, the site went down with it.

  • Remote workflow icon

    Thousands of Trucks, Zero Tolerance for Downtime

    Some sites process thousands of trucks per day under government and vendor contracts. Delays risk financial penalties and contract loss — making uptime non-negotiable for the business owner.

  • Automation update icon

    Sites Up to Five Hours from Headquarters

    When a scale failed, IT had to image a new device and physically drive it to the site — sometimes a four to five hour journey each way. Sites operated in manual mode for a full day or more while waiting.

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    No Reliable Way to Replicate Ticket and Camera Data

    Each scale photographs every truck and license plate crossing it. Without a reliable replication solution, dispute evidence — photos, timestamps, transaction records — wasn't making it back to HQ fast enough to be useful.

If a scale goes down, the owner gets upset — downtime is unacceptable. Until recently, we never had a true failover solution. GoodSync changed that.
Manager of Infrastructure

The Solution

Rather than wait for the application vendor to add failover support, the infrastructure team built their own DR solution using GoodSync — deploying fully configured secondary workstations at every scale site and syncing all critical data in real time.

  • Primary + Secondary Workstation at Every Site

    Primary + Secondary Workstation at Every Site

    Each scale site now runs a fully configured secondary workstation alongside the primary. GoodSync continuously syncs configuration files, database backups, and application data between them — ready to take over at any moment.

  • 15-Minute Failover, Fully Tested

    If the primary scale fails, staff can bring the secondary workstation online in under 15 minutes. The team has tested this repeatedly. It works flawlessly every time, replacing what used to be a full day of downtime.

    15-Minute Failover, Fully Tested
  • Ticket and Camera Image Replication to HQ

    Ticket and Camera Image Replication to HQ

    GoodSync pulls truck photos, license plate images, and transaction tickets from every site back to a central server at headquarters. When customers dispute a transaction, HQ can immediately produce photographic evidence.

The Results

GoodSync gave the company something their application vendor never offered: a reliable, tested failover path that the infrastructure team built and owns. The business now runs with confidence that a hardware failure won't cost them a contract.

  • Downtime Reduced from Days to Minutes

    Downtime Reduced from Days to Minutes

    What previously meant a full day of manual operations and a multi-hour drive to site is now a 15-minute switchover to the secondary workstation, with no data loss and no IT travel required.

  • Contract Risk Eliminated at Scale Sites

    Contract Risk Eliminated at Scale Sites

    Government and vendor contracts requiring priority truck movement are protected. With near-instant failover, the business can meet delivery SLAs even when hardware fails unexpectedly.

  • Dispute-Ready Transaction Evidence at HQ

    Dispute-Ready Transaction Evidence at HQ

    Every truck photo, license plate image, and transaction ticket is replicated back to headquarters. Customer disputes are resolved immediately with timestamped photographic evidence — no chasing site staff for records.

GoodSync enables IT to keep up with the business. Sometimes we don’t fully understand what the business side requires until we dig in — and then we realize how critical uptime and reliability really are.
Manager of Infrastructure

Key Takeaways

  • DIY Disaster Recovery That Works

    DIY Disaster Recovery That Works

    Built failover into an application that doesn’t support it — proven in testing, now rolling to production across all quarry sites

  • Five Years, Five Support Tickets

    Five Years, Five Support Tickets

    Rock-solid reliability over half a decade of production use — every issue was operator error, never a product failure