Hetzner Storage And Databases

Hetzner Storage and Databases

When to use

• Choosing a storage tier for a Hetzner-hosted workload.
• Sizing and attaching Cloud Volumes to production servers.
• Designing a backup retention and recovery strategy.
• Evaluating Storage Box for off-server backups or shared assets.
• Selecting an external managed database provider to complement Hetzner compute.
• Auditing data-at-rest protection, lifecycle, and cross-location durability.

Critical limitation: no native managed databases

Hetzner does not offer managed Postgres, MySQL, Redis, or any other managed database service. Unlike AWS RDS, Google Cloud SQL, or DigitalOcean Managed Databases, there is no Hetzner-native service that handles patching, failover, backups, or connection pooling for a relational or document store.

Your options:

| Approach | Trade-off | | --- | --- | | External managed DB (Crunchy Bridge, Neon, Aiven, PlanetScale) | You pay the managed service premium; you get patching, HA, PITR. | | Self-hosted on Hetzner CCX dedicated vCPU servers | Full cost control; you own replication, backups, failover, upgrades. | | Hybrid: Hetzner compute + Hetzner Storage Box for WAL archiving | Reduces managed-service cost for Postgres; still requires operational skill. |

Skills in this plugin surface this choice at every relevant decision point.

Storage options

Cloud Volumes

Block storage attached to a single Cloud server over the network. Hetzner implements volumes on Ceph-backed distributed storage within the same network zone.

Characteristics:

• Sizes: 10 GB to 10240 GB per volume; billed at €0.052/GB/mo.
• Attachment: one server at a time; format as ext4 or XFS.
• Cross-AZ semantics: volumes are location-scoped (e.g., nbg1). A volume cannot be attached to a server in a different location. To move data cross-location, take a snapshot, download, and restore.
• No cross-region attach. Hetzner does not offer global block storage.
• Performance: adequate for most application workloads; not optimized for high-IOPS database primaries on demanding workloads. For high-IOPS database use, prefer CCX dedicated servers with locally attached NVMe (Robot AX / EX) or co-locate the database on the server's local disk and rely on replication for durability.
• Resize online (expand only); shrinking requires unmount, resize2fs, and repartition.

resource "hcloud_volume" "data" {
  name      = "data-vol"
  size      = 100
  server_id = hcloud_server.app.id
  automount = true
  format    = "ext4"
  location  = "nbg1"
}

Backups (automated)

Automated daily snapshots of the entire server disk, managed by Hetzner.

• Cost: 20% of the server's hourly price (added to the server cost).
• Retention: 7 backup slots. Hetzner rotates on a weekly cycle — one backup per day of the week; oldest slot replaced each day.
• Location: same as the server. No cross-location backup.
• Enable with: hcloud server enable-backup or backup = true in Terraform hcloud_server.
• Restore: creates a new server or restores in-place from the backup image.

Backups are not a substitute for application-level backups of individual databases. A backup captures the disk at a point in time; a PostgreSQL WAL-archived base backup gives you PITR. Use both.

Snapshots (on-demand)

On-demand disk images of a server, stored in the same location.

• Cost: €0.01/GB/mo based on compressed image size.
• No automatic rotation; you must manage snapshot lifecycle in IaC or a cron.
• Use cases: pre-deploy checkpoint, golden server image for reprovisioning, migration source.
• Create with: hcloud server create-image --type snapshot after powering off the server (or from a running server — consistency not guaranteed for databases without FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK or equivalent).

Storage Box

Network-attached storage accessible over SFTP, SCP, Samba (SMB), WebDAV, Rsync, Borg, and Restic. Not an S3-compatible object store (no HTTP REST API, no presigned URLs). Positioned as a backup and file-share target, not a CDN origin or application blob store.

| Tier | Capacity | Price | | --- | --- | --- | | BX11 | 100 GB | ~€3.45/mo | | BX31 | 500 GB | ~€8.90/mo | | BX41 | 2 TB | ~€17.90/mo | | BX61 | 5 TB | ~€34.90/mo | | BX91 | 20 TB | ~€69.90/mo |

(Prices as of 2026-05; verify at hetzner.com/storage/storage-box.)

Billing model: flat monthly; no per-request or per-GB-egress fees from Storage Box to Hetzner servers within the same network (egress to the public internet is counted against your server's traffic allowance).

Use cases for Storage Box:

• Off-server PostgreSQL base backups and WAL segments (via pgbackrest or wal-g).
• Borg / Restic encrypted backup targets.
• Shared file assets accessed by multiple servers via SMB.
• Robot dedicated server backup destination when local disks are the primary storage.

Subaccount support: each Storage Box can have up to 200 subaccounts with separate credentials and directory scopes — useful for multi-tenant or per-service backup isolation.

External managed database providers

When you need managed Postgres, MySQL, or Redis alongside Hetzner compute:

| Provider | Database(s) | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | | Crunchy Bridge | Postgres | Enterprise Postgres, EU data residency, PITR, HA included | | Neon | Postgres (serverless) | Branch-per-PR workflow, autoscaling, generous free tier | | Aiven | Postgres, MySQL, Redis, OpenSearch, Kafka | Multi-cloud, strong EU SLAs, VPC-peering-like trusted source IP | | PlanetScale | MySQL-compatible | Branching schema changes, no foreign key enforced (Vitess) | | Supabase | Postgres + Auth + Storage | BaaS platform; self-hostable for data sovereignty |

Connectivity from Hetzner compute to managed providers: use the provider's trusted-IP allowlist or VPN tunnel. Do not expose the database port to the public internet from either side.

Anti-patterns

| Anti-pattern | What goes wrong | | --- | --- | | Cloud Volume as sole database durability layer | Volume lives in one location; no replication. A location failure loses the volume. Use replication (streaming, logical) to a second server. | | Backups enabled but never restore-tested | You discover the backup is unrecoverable during the incident. Restore drill quarterly. | | Storage Box as an S3 replacement for app-served assets | No presigned URLs, no CDN integration, no HTTP GET endpoint. Use Cloudflare R2 or Backblaze B2 for object storage. | | Relying on Hetzner backups alone for a database | Daily disk snapshot with no PITR = up to 23-hour data loss window. Add WAL archiving for Postgres, binlog archiving for MySQL. | | Snapshot of a running database without a quiesce step | Disk snapshot during a write = torn page. For InnoDB / Postgres: FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK or pg_start_backup() + stop replication lag before snapping. | | Accumulating stale snapshots | €0.01/GB/mo adds up. A 100 GB snapshot after compression is typically ~30 GB = €0.30/mo × many = meaningful. Prune in IaC. |

Security defaults

• Encrypt database backups before shipping to Storage Box; Borg and Restic both provide client-side encryption.
• Storage Box credentials (SFTP key or password) should be per-service subaccounts, not the root account.
• Cloud Volumes do not have at-rest encryption by default. For sensitive data, use LUKS on the volume before mounting: cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/disk/by-id/.
• WAL archive files should be encrypted at the application level (pgbackrest encryption, wal-g server-side SSE) before upload to Storage Box.
• Do not store database root credentials in cloud-init user_data or unencrypted environment files.

Observability defaults

• Monitor volume disk usage; Hetzner does not alert on volume space. Add a disk-full alert in your external monitoring platform targeting the mount point.
• Track backup completion via the hcloud API (hcloud server list-backups) or export this check to a simple cron + alerting webhook.
• For external managed databases, use the provider's built-in monitoring plus a slow-query alert to your observability platform.
• Storage Box: monitor free space via SFTP or SMB df; alert before 85% capacity.

Cost considerations

• Cloud Volumes at €0.052/GB/mo are significantly cheaper than AWS EBS (gp3 ~$0.08/GB/mo) and comparable to DigitalOcean Block Storage.
• Storage Box bulk tiers are cost-competitive for large backup archives; BX91 at 20 TB for ~€69.90/mo is hard to beat for cold backup storage.
• Self-hosted Postgres on a CCX13 (2 dedicated vCPU, 8 GB, ~€9.90/mo) + Storage Box WAL archiving + streaming replication to a secondary CCX13 costs less than most managed Postgres tiers at the same specs.
• Egress from Storage Box to Hetzner servers is free within the same network; egress to the internet counts against your server's traffic allowance.

IaC hints

• Terraform: hcloud_volume, hcloud_volume_attachment. Set automount = true and format = "ext4" for new volumes; use delete_protection = true for production data volumes.
• Ansible: hetzner.hcloud.hcloud_volume for provisioning; community.general.filesystem + ansible.posix.mount for formatting and mounting.
• Storage Box: not managed by hcloud Terraform provider — use SSH key management via the Robot API or Hetzner panel.
• LUKS encryption: provision via cloud-init or Ansible community.crypto.luks_device module before the application boots.

Verification checklist

• [ ] Cloud Volume has delete_protection enabled for production data.
• [ ] Automated backup enabled on every server with a stateful workload.
• [ ] Backup restore tested; restore procedure documented.
• [ ] PITR strategy documented for relational databases — WAL archiving enabled and tested.
• [ ] Storage Box credentials are subaccount-scoped; root account key not used in automation.
• [ ] Sensitive volumes encrypted with LUKS or application-level encryption.
• [ ] Snapshot lifecycle managed in IaC; stale snapshots pruned.
• [ ] External managed database (or self-hosted replication topology) chosen and justified against cost and operational model.
• [ ] Disk-space alert configured on all mounted volumes.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: jsgerman-oss
• Source: jsgerman-oss/blackrim-nimbus-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.