Edge High Availability Without a Data Center: SafeKit for OT & Distributed Sites

The Edge HA Challenge

Edge sites often have no data center and no HA expertise — yet business continuity is critical. A factory floor, an offshore oil platform, a hospital clinic, a retail store, or a 5G antenna site cannot afford downtime, but cannot justify the cost and complexity of a traditional data center HA cluster.

Traditional HA solutions — Microsoft Failover Cluster (WSFC), Pacemaker/Corosync, VMware HA — were designed for data centers: they assume shared storage (SAN/NAS), dedicated cluster hardware, permanent IT staff, and complex OS-level expertise. None of these exist at the edge.

SafeKit was built for exactly this gap. It keeps edge applications running in factories, oil platforms, ships, building security, air traffic control, 5G networks, healthcare, retail, and more — with nothing more than two standard servers and a LAN.

What Makes SafeKit the Natural Fit for Edge

SafeKit turns two standard edge servers (any brand, physical or virtual) into a plug-and-play HA cluster — no shared storage, no SAN, no special hardware. One lightweight software stack delivers:

• Real-time synchronous file replication — data is mirrored byte-level to the standby server at write time
• Automatic failover — if the primary server fails, the standby takes over without human intervention, within seconds
• Optional network load balancing — for active-active deployments where both servers share the workload
• Web console — browser-based management, remotely accessible over HTTPS, requiring no on-site expertise
• Silent, scriptable install — suitable for OEM embedding and mass deployment across hundreds of distributed sites

There is no SAN to procure, no Windows Server Datacenter license required, no Linux cluster OS expertise needed, and no dedicated cluster hardware. The entire HA stack is a single software package.

Edge & Distributed Deployment Suitability

SafeKit is specifically designed for edge, branch office, and distributed enterprise scenarios:

Why Edge OT Environments Are Different

OT (Operational Technology) environments — SCADA, BMS, physical security, industrial control — have requirements that differ fundamentally from IT data centers:

• No IT staff on-site. A substation, a remote pump station, or a ship has no sysadmin. HA must be self-managing.
• Air-gapped or constrained networks. Many OT sites have no internet access and limited WAN bandwidth. HA software must work fully offline.
• 24/7 uptime, zero tolerance for complexity. Stopping a production line, losing video surveillance, or interrupting access control costs far more than the HA software itself.
• Long equipment lifecycles. OT servers may run 10–15 years. The HA solution must be stable, low-maintenance, and not require constant updates.
• Standard x86 hardware only. No budget or justification for SAN or dedicated cluster nodes at a remote industrial site.
• Intolerance for OS-level complexity. Pacemaker, Corosync, or WSFC require cluster expertise that OT operators simply do not have and should not need.

SafeKit's SANless, two-server, automatic-failover model addresses every one of these constraints directly.

Ideal Edge Use Cases

Any site without a data center — where high availability still matters:

Edge vs. Data Center HA: Key Differences

Technical Minimum Requirements

• Servers: 2 standard x86 servers or VMs (any hardware brand, physical or virtual) or ARM (Linux only)
• OS: Windows Server 2019 / 2022 / 2025, Windows 11, RHEL 8/9, Ubuntu 24.04
• Network: 1 Gbps LAN for replication; dedicated heartbeat network recommended
• Storage: Local disks only — no SAN, no NAS, no shared storage of any kind
• No special OS edition — Windows Server Standard is sufficient; no Datacenter license required

For full technical specifications, sizing constraints, and procurement criteria, see the RFP/RFI Technical Reference.