SaaS hosting in Germany: data protection, backups, monitoring

Outages should surface before customers call

That takes automated checks at short intervals and an alert as soon as a status changes. Ours run every two minutes: availability via HTTPS, container health, disk space and memory. If something fails, the alert comes by email or webhook.

This has a built-in weakness. If the server fails completely, it can no longer send an alert itself. That's why a second, independent monitor runs on a separate server.

Backups live apart from the server and get checked every week

We back up databases every four hours and configuration and stored files daily, both encrypted and kept for seven days in storage separate from the server. On top of that comes a daily image of the entire server, with seven versions kept.

Once a week, an automated run checks that the backups are present, current and not empty, and reads a sample. Art. 32 GDPR requires regular reviews anyway, along with the ability to restore data quickly after an incident.

Every update has a way back

Every application runs as a container with us. After a merge, CI checks the code, builds an image and stores it tagged with the commit's ID; the server then only replaces containers that have a new image, without a noticeable interruption. If the download fails, the previous version keeps running, and every earlier version can be started again via its tag.

Third-party software with its own database is updated by script: back up, update, check, roll back if needed.

The GDPR doesn't require a location in Germany

The same data protection law applies in the EU and the European Economic Area, Norway included; only transfers to third countries such as the USA need a separate legal basis (Art. 44 et seq. GDPR). We still run our own services in Germany; for projects, servers and storage are also available in France, Spain, Finland and Norway.

The pitfall here is the CDN. If you put a content delivery network or a protection service from the USA in front, as we do for this website, you transfer data to a third country. The EU-US Data Privacy Framework (adequacy decision 2023/1795) can be the basis, but it only applies to certified companies. Our service providers are listed in our privacy policy.

Every service provider that processes personal data on your behalf also needs a data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR. If we run your software, we are your processor, and our service providers are sub-processors that you approve.

What we take away

A backup that nobody checks is just a promise. That makes the weekly check the most important part of our backups, even though it doesn't back up a single byte itself.

A server can't report its own outage. Only the second monitor on a separate server notices a total outage, which is exactly the case in which the phone would otherwise ring.

“Around the clock” means: checked automatically. Guaranteed response times within which someone intervenes come with a maintenance agreement. Clarify that with any hosting provider in advance, along with how quickly you can roll back to the last version. Our answers are on the Operations & hosting page, and Marc answers them personally.