Backup Solutions
Disaster Recovery
S3 compatible backup disaster recovery solutions
Strengthen Disaster Recovery with Sovereign S3-Compatible Backup Solutions
Navigating disaster recovery in 2025 means confronting complex data sovereignty laws and unpredictable cloud costs. A majority of EU businesses now demand European solutions to avoid foreign jurisdiction and budget surprises. This article outlines a clear strategy for building a resilient, compliant, and cost-effective S3-compatible backup and disaster recovery plan.
Key Takeawys
Digital sovereignty is a primary business driver, with 84% of European organizations planning to use sovereign cloud solutions to comply with GDPR and avoid foreign jurisdiction.
An "Always-Hot" storage architecture with zero egress fees eliminates recovery delays and provides predictable costs, solving a challenge faced by 94% of IT leaders.
S3 Object Lock is essential for ransomware protection, creating immutable backups that cannot be encrypted or deleted by attackers.
For UK and EU enterprises, a robust disaster recovery (DR) strategy is non-negotiable, yet reliance on non-EU cloud providers introduces significant risks. Exposure to foreign laws like the CLOUD Act and volatile cost models with hidden egress fees undermine both compliance and financial planning. In fact, 56% of European organizations report overspending on cloud storage budgets. The solution lies in S3 compatible backup disaster recovery solutions that are sovereign by design. This approach ensures your data remains under EU jurisdiction, aligns with regulations like GDPR and the upcoming NIS-2 directive, and provides the predictable economics needed to operate confidently. By leveraging a European cloud, businesses can transform their DR from a liability into a competitive advantage.
Prioritise Digital Sovereignty in Your DR Strategy
Data sovereignty is no longer an IT-specific concern; it is a boardroom-level strategic imperative for over 84% of European organizations. Storing backup data with non-EU providers exposes it to foreign laws, creating a direct conflict with GDPR's strict data residency requirements. A sovereign cloud architecture, operated exclusively in certified European data centers, eliminates this risk entirely. This ensures your most critical data is governed solely by EU law, building digital trust with customers who increasingly demand it. This foundation of trust is critical as enterprise data flows are expected to grow by 2-3x by 2030. Choosing an EU-based provider for your disaster recovery plan is the first step toward true digital autonomy.
This focus on sovereignty prepares your organization for the next level of operational resilience.
Demand Advanced S3 Compatibility for Seamless Integration
True S3 compatibility goes far beyond basic object storage operations, protecting your technology investments. An enterprise-ready solution must support advanced API capabilities like versioning, lifecycle management, and object tagging without requiring code rewrites. This ensures your existing backup tools, from vendors like Veeam and Acronis, integrate out-of-the-box. Identity and Access Management (IAM) must also map to your organization's structure. Look for support for external Identity Providers via SAML/OIDC and granular, role-driven policies to maintain secure defaults. A first-class console UX allows teams to manage buckets, permissions, and lifecycle rules for hundreds of objects without deep API expertise. This comprehensive compatibility minimizes migration risk and keeps your existing operational workflows running smoothly.
With a compatible foundation, you can then optimize the architecture for performance and cost.
Eliminate Recovery Delays with an Always-Hot Architecture
Complex storage tiering introduces unacceptable risks and costs into disaster recovery. Retrieving data from cold storage can significantly delay recovery time objectives (RTOs), with some tiers taking hours to restore data. An "Always-Hot" object storage model ensures 100% of your data is immediately accessible, eliminating restore delays and complex lifecycle policies. This architectural choice simplifies operations and keeps third-party backup tools stable. Furthermore, it provides economic predictability. A transparent model with no egress fees, no API call costs, and no minimum storage duration removes the budget surprises that plague 94% of IT leaders. This approach ensures your cloud backup is both fast and financially manageable, even under the pressure of a real recovery event.
This predictable and performant architecture is also the key to defending against modern cyber threats.
Build an Impenetrable Ransomware Defense with Immutable Backups
Ransomware attacks have nearly doubled, making immutable backups an essential layer of any DR strategy. S3 Object Lock provides a write-once-read-many (WORM) model, making your backup data unchangeable for a defined retention period. Even if an attacker gains access to your environment, they cannot encrypt or delete objects protected by the lock. This feature is a cornerstone of modern ransomware protection. When implementing Object Lock, you can choose between two modes:
Governance Mode: Allows designated users with special permissions to alter lock settings, offering a balance of protection and administrative flexibility.
Compliance Mode: Prevents any user, including the root account, from modifying or deleting the object until the retention period expires, providing the highest level of data integrity.
Using S3 compatible backup disaster recovery solutions with Object Lock ensures your recovery point is always clean and available. This capability transforms your backup repository into a secure vault, ready for any contingency.
Beyond ransomware, your DR strategy must also account for evolving European regulations.
Ensure Regulatory Readiness for the EU Data Act and NIS-2
Beginning in September 2025, new EU regulations will reshape data governance and security requirements. A sovereign cloud provider helps you meet these obligations by design. The EU Data Act, applicable from 12 September 2025, mandates data portability and aims to eliminate vendor lock-in. Providers must facilitate seamless switching, a process that will become free of charge by 2027. The NIS-2 Directive, which Member States must transpose by 17 October 2024, heightens cybersecurity duties for critical sectors. It mandates stringent supply chain security, requiring you to ensure your cloud provider meets robust risk management and incident reporting standards. Using a geofenced, EU-only cloud platform helps satisfy these requirements for secure S3 object storage, turning regulatory burdens into a competitive advantage.
These advantages extend directly to the partners who deliver these solutions to the market.
Empower MSPs with a Predictable, Partner-Ready Platform
For Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and resellers, predictable margins are essential for building profitable Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) offerings. A pricing model with zero egress fees and no API call charges provides the stability needed to create defensible service packages. The platform is partner-ready, featuring a multi-tenant console with robust role-based access control (RBAC) and multi-factor authentication (MFA). This simplifies client management and enhances security. Automation via a full-featured API and CLI allows for seamless integration into existing provisioning and billing systems. Recent distribution agreements with api in Germany and Northamber plc in the UK have expanded local access for hundreds of channel partners, ensuring fast onboarding and support. This ecosystem focus helps MSPs deliver high-value, compliant S3 API backup solutions.
With the right platform and partner, implementing a sovereign DR strategy is straightforward.
Implement a Resilient, S3-Compatible Backup Strategy
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FAQ
How does Impossible Cloud ensure my data stays within the EU?
Impossible Cloud is a European company that operates exclusively in certified European data centers. We use country-level geofencing to guarantee your data is stored only in your chosen EU region, ensuring compliance with GDPR and protecting you from extraterritorial laws like the U.S. CLOUD Act.
Is your S3 API fully compatible with my existing backup software?
Yes, we provide full S3 API compatibility, which means your existing applications, scripts, and tools—including leading backup software from Veeam, Acronis, and NovaBackup—work without modification. We support advanced features like Object Lock, versioning, and lifecycle management.
What makes your pricing model predictable for backup and DR?
Our pricing is designed for predictability. We charge a simple, transparent rate for storage used and have zero egress fees, zero API call costs, and no minimum storage duration. This means you can restore your data as often as needed without facing unexpected bills, making your total cost of ownership easy to calculate.
How does Object Lock protect my backups from ransomware?
Our Immutable Storage, which uses S3 Object Lock, allows you to make your backup data unchangeable for a specified period. This write-once-read-many (WORM) model prevents anyone —even with administrative credentials—from deleting or encrypting your critical backup files, ensuring you always have a clean copy for recovery.
Is your platform suitable for MSPs and channel partners?
Absolutely. Our platform is partner-ready with a multi-tenant console, granular IAM controls (RBAC/MFA), and full automation via API/CLI. The predictable, zero-egress-fee model allows partners to build profitable and defensible BaaS and DRaaS offerings with stable margins.
How do you help with compliance for NIS-2 and the EU Data Act?
By being an EU-sovereign provider, we help you meet the supply chain security requirements of NIS-2. Our commitment to open standards and proven data portability aligns directly with the EU Data Act's goals, ensuring you avoid vendor lock-in and can prove a real exit path for your data.
