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
KPIs Achieved
-
15 minRecovery 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
-
24/7Scale uptime maintained
Scales processing thousands of trucks per day stay operational, protecting government and vendor contracts from costly penalties
-
5Support 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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
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
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.
-
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
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
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
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.
Key Takeaways
-
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
Rock-solid reliability over half a decade of production use — every issue was operator error, never a product failure