Resilience, security, and sovereign storage “made and hosted in Germany”
Stuttgart, March 19, 2026
Third-copy approach, modern airgap, immutability: Empalis Sovereign Vault (ESV) is an S3-compatible storage solution that is “always hot” and developed, operated, and hosted by Empalis in Germany.
As an airgap component, ESV's strength lies in its clear separation of duties: Business-critical data resides on a third, independent, and immutable offsite copy—to which the customer's employees have no administrative access. This separation effectively prevents the potential deletion and manipulation of data, as well as the compromise of the backup environment, including in the area of cybersecurity.
Business continuity and risk management thus benefit from added security regarding operational capability. At the same time, the ESV offering meets important compliance requirements and regulations for greater cyber resilience according to NIS2 and DORA.
As a completely sovereign solution, the offsite ESV solution is therefore ideally suited for use alongside existing cloud-based or hyperscaler-based infrastructures that currently cannot guarantee 100% data sovereignty, especially for business-critical data, due to geopolitical and regulatory constraints.
A look under the hood: ESV offers an advantage over "classic" S3 or object storage
Empalis Sovereign Vault (ESV) distinguishes itself through the combination of its architecture and operation from the security mechanisms of hyperscalers or pure storage providers: ESV is not simply "just" S3 storage, but a managed offsite or airgap component (media break) that effectively eliminates typical vulnerabilities. The data is hosted personally by the Empalis Consulting team in German data centers and is decoupled from other cloud applications.
Customers—especially critical infrastructure organizations or manufacturers that must adhere to very high security standards—benefit particularly from the operational relief for their IT teams thanks to the combined "immutability-by-design" solution plus operational discipline. In contrast, with "classic" S3 and object storage providers, as well as hyperscalers, the operation and responsibility lie entirely with the customer (shared responsibility model).
Compatible component to relieve the burden on IT teams
As a Zero Trust operating model, ESV relies on security principles such as secure airgap and separation of duties as a backup component, complementing and being compatible with today's "all-in-one" instances, which, like hyperscaler solutions, back up within the same platform domain. ESV includes object locking for immutable backups, continuous implementation and monitoring of best practices (including IAM policies), and an "always hot" design to enable multiple parallel recovery operations in the event of a disaster.
Costs and Predictability
Another key advantage of ESV is its fixed OPEX price per TB, starting at €12 per TB per month (plus a one-time setup fee depending on the volume/contract model) – with no transfer, API, or egress fees. Additional storage can be ordered at short notice. Customers can rely on consistent service quality – included in the offer, not as an additional option – regardless of the data volume.
Use Cases, Integration, and Enhanced Security for Cloud Workloads in Hyperscalers
Typical use cases for ESV include:
- A sovereign offsite data copy to meet compliance requirements
- Geo-redundancy without needing a second data center located more than 100 km away
- A secure entry into the cloud for those lacking cloud experience, with encryption, secure transfer, IAM policies, and best practices provided by Empalis
- Requirements from NIS2 or critical infrastructure organizations, such as fault tolerance and disaster recovery management
- Cost reduction without compromising quality thanks to the fixed price.
For integration, ESV is designed as an S3-compatible target to continue using existing backup stacks. The SLAs and service offerings of the Empalis Managed Service "Empalis Service Plus" are also integrated. Common backup products such as Rubrik, Commvault, IBM Storage Protect, Veeam, and Cohesity, or those from other vendors, are compatible.
For sovereign cloud workloads, Empalis also offers connections to hyperscalers such as AWS European Sovereign Cloud (ESC) or AWS: If services like those offered by AWS are essential for the customer, they can supplement their operation in a sovereign cloud region with the decoupled, auditable offsite copy ESV.
Do you have any questions about ESV? Feel free to write to me directly here or book an appointment for a no-obligation introductory meeting.
Markus Stumpf, Chief Technology Officer
Phone +49 172 541 45 67
