The client collects IoT-generated operational logs from lifts deployed across airport environments, with data inserted every second. These logs are monitored through dashboards for real-time insights into lift telemetry and operational health.

Business Challenges

A non-domain environment ruled out the client's intended native failover setup, right as continuous availability became critical.

Constant, critical data ingestion

Lift telemetry is inserted into the database every second, making continuous availability critical to operations.

Non-domain environment

SQL Servers operated in a non-domain environment, ruling out the intended native automatic failover setup.

High availability requirement

Uninterrupted access to the continuous stream of lift telemetry and operational data was essential.

No off-the-shelf failover path

Standard SQL Server automatic failover architecture wasn't available, requiring a custom-built solution.

Project Objectives

Geopits was asked to design a custom SQL Server high-availability solution for a non-domain environment, one that could continuously monitor server and database availability, automatically initiate failover when the principal became unavailable, and provide real-time mirroring health visibility.

Key Goals:

Enable automatic failover without native domain-based clustering
Detect Principal failures and validate the Mirror before failing over
Give operators real-time visibility into mirroring health

Solution Provided by Geopits

Geopits built a custom monitoring and failover layer on top of SQL Server Database Mirroring, purpose-designed for a non-domain environment.

Certificate-based mirroring

SQL Server Database Mirroring was configured using certificate-based authentication to support the non-domain environment.

Custom PowerShell failover monitor

A custom PowerShell automatic failover monitor continuously validates SQL Server connectivity and current Principal/Mirror roles.

Validated, controlled failover logic

Configurable consecutive-failure thresholds, Mirror state validation, local-node validation, and automatic mirroring resume run before any failover, with forced service activation and detailed daily logging once conditions are met.

T-SQL HTML monitoring dashboard

A T-SQL HTML monitoring dashboard was built and automatically published using SQL Server Agent, PowerShell, and Windows Task Scheduler.

Results & Business Impact

The custom failover layer delivered the availability guarantees the client needed, without the domain-based clustering that wasn't available to them.

Capabilities

Before

After

Failover Method

Native automatic failover unavailable (non-domain environment)

Custom PowerShell-driven automatic failover

Availability

Service availability at risk during Principal server failure

99.99% availability

Recovery Time (RTO)

Undefined

5-minute RTO

Monitoring & Visibility

No centralized monitoring

Real-time browser-based dashboard with 5-minute refresh

Health Checks

No automated health checks

Health checks every 10 seconds with automatic failover after 30 consecutive failures (~5 minutes)

Key outcomes

Automated, validated failover

The solution automatically detects Principal SQL Server failures, validates the Mirror, and performs controlled failover with minimal manual intervention.

5-minute recovery time objective

A 5-minute RTO was maintained, minimizing service disruption to the IoT monitoring system.

99.99% availability

The high-availability solution achieved 99.99% availability across both CMS and CMS_log databases, roughly 400GB of data in total.

Real-time mirroring visibility

Mirroring health and performance are continuously monitored through a browser-based dashboard refreshing every 5 minutes, with 300 historical snapshots retained.

Conclusion

Geopits designed a custom SQL Server high-availability solution for a non-domain airport IoT environment, delivering automatic, validated failover with a 5-minute RTO and 99.99% availability across the client's lift monitoring databases.

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