Cloud engineering

Hosting in Germany: your applications on servers in the EU

Where the data lives is the first question for many customers and data protection officers. Sortia Labs runs applications on servers in Germany and the EU: on our own infrastructure, with a hosting provider of your choice or in a German region of AWS and Azure, with backups, updates and monitoring.

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Hosting in Germany
Servers in Germany
EU hosting
Managed hosting
Self-hosting
GDPR in mind

Browser and appYour users
TLS and firewallCertificates renew themselves
Server in GermanySystem services, nginx
DatabasePostgreSQL or MySQL
BackupCopy at a second provider

Hosting in Germany

What running applications in Germany involves

Location to your requirements

Servers in a data centre in Germany, a German or European hosting provider, the Frankfurt region of AWS and Azure, or your own server room with Proxmox. We record where application, database, files and backups are located.

Containers, proxy and certificates

Applications run as Docker containers or system services behind Traefik and nginx, and TLS certificates renew automatically. A firewall on the server lets through only the connections an application needs.

Backups in a second location

Automated backups with a copy at a second provider, so that a problem in one data centre does not hit the backups as well. We rehearse restores regularly instead of waiting for an emergency.

Fonts and scripts from your own server

Many websites load fonts, scripts or maps from third-party servers and thereby pass on the IP address of every visitor. We serve such files from the website server itself, as we do on our own sites.

Documentation for data protection

Which providers process which data, where are the servers, who has access? We supply the technical details for your record of processing activities, and if we run your application, we sign a data processing agreement with you.

Approach

How your application gets onto servers in Germany

1
Requirements
What data does the application process, which rules apply, and how much load is expected? From that follows which location and which provider fit.
2
Setup
We set up servers, network, firewall, certificates and backups as code. Before go-live we test the restore, the alerts and the access rights.
3
Move and go-live
The application moves according to plan, with a trial run and a short, announced switch-over. In the first days after that we watch load and errors particularly closely.
4
Operations
Updates, backups, monitoring and help with incidents come from one team. If you wish, we report regularly on what happened in operations.

From our own work

Software we build and run ourselves.

Postkey Encrypted vault and sharingWe run Postkey ourselves: the database is on our own server in Germany, the encrypted files at OVHcloud in Paris with a copy at IONOS in Frankfurt. The database is backed up automatically, with a copy at a second provider. Tempo Calendar and day plannerTempo runs on our own server in Germany, with a database of its own, separate from our other products. Photos and files are stored encrypted at OVHcloud in Paris.

Questions about Hosting in Germany

Is a data centre in Germany enough for the GDPR?

The location is an important building block, but not the only one. Data processing agreements, access rights, encryption, deletion periods and the question of which services transfer data in the background count as well. We implement the technical side; the legal assessment stays with your data protection officer.

Do you host our application yourselves?

Yes, on our infrastructure in Germany, if that suits your application. We can equally set up and run operations with a hosting provider of your choice, in your AWS or Azure environment or on your own servers.

Are AWS and Azure in Frankfurt hosting in Germany?

The servers are then in Germany, but the provider remains a US corporation. Whether that is enough depends on your industry, your customers and your contracts. We also show you alternatives with German and European providers and what they mean for operations.

What happens if a data centre fails?

That is what backups in a second location and a documented recovery plan are for. If needed, we also keep a second server at another location ready to switch over to. How much precaution makes sense depends on cost and risk, and we work that out together.

Read on.

MonitoringA service that stops at night is often noticed only when the first customer calls.Cloud migrationMoving to the cloud, to another provider or back to your own servers does not have to bring your business to a halt.AWS and AzureAWS and Azure offer an almost endless choice of services, and that is exactly what makes getting started hard.Backup and recoveryA backup only counts once it can be restored, within the time your business can bear.End-to-end encryptionWith end-to-end encryption, content is encrypted on the device; the server stores it but does not receive the key.KubernetesKubernetes plays to its strengths when many services, several teams or strongly fluctuating load come together.

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Should your application run in Germany?

Tell us which application it is about and which requirements you have. We will suggest a location and an operating model that fit.