Offsite backup storage in Kenya

A second copy of your office data, outside the office

Laptops get stolen, file servers die and ransomware encrypts every share it can reach. A storage server in a different building gives your business a clean copy to restore from. You choose the backup software, the schedule and the encryption keys, with full root access.

Size your server Ask on WhatsApp

Data to protect today

300 GB

We suggest

Storage S1 KES 2,000/mo

Up to 500 GB of data, plus roughly 50% more for a month of daily changes and a year of monthly snapshots, comes to about 750 GB, leaving room on the 1 TB disk.

Order Storage S1

Why a backup on the shelf next to the server is not enough

Many Kenyan offices back up to an external drive that sits on top of the file server, or to a NAS in the same cabinet. That protects you from a single failed disk. It does nothing when there is a fire, a break-in, a power surge that takes out everything on the same socket, or a ransomware infection that finds the NAS share and encrypts it along with everything else.

The 3-2-1 rule is the plain fix: three copies of your data, on two different kinds of storage, with one copy somewhere else. A storage server reached over the internet is a practical way to get that third, offsite copy without anyone carrying drives home on a matatu every Friday. Tools like restic and Borg send only what has changed after the first run, so nightly jobs stay small.

The things worth protecting are usually obvious once you list them: the shared drive with contracts and HR files, the accounting database for QuickBooks, Sage or Tally, the scanned KRA returns and receipts, and the Documents folders on staff laptops. Some of that is personal data under the Data Protection Act, so it should leave the office encrypted, with the keys held by you.

The problem

What usually goes wrong in office backups

Ransomware reaches the backup too

If the backup drive is mapped as a network share, ransomware treats it like any other folder. An offsite repository that only accepts new snapshots, and cannot be deleted from the office PCs, gives you something clean to roll back to.

Every copy in one building

A fire, flood or burglary does not care how many USB drives you own. If every copy of your data lives in the same office, a single incident can take the business records and all the backups with it.

Laptops that never get backed up

Sales and field staff keep their work on laptops that rarely connect to the office network. A backup client that runs over the internet, wherever the laptop is, catches their files instead of waiting for someone to plug in a drive.

Nobody has tested a restore

A green tick in the backup software only means a job finished. Until someone actually restores a folder or a whole machine and opens the files, you do not know whether last month of backups is usable.

What runs on it

Backup software that works well with a storage server

With root access you install the server side yourself and point your office machines at it. These are tools we see Kenyan sysadmins use for this job.

restic

A single binary for Windows, macOS and Linux that encrypts and deduplicates every snapshot. Point it at the storage server over SFTP, or run rest-server in append-only mode so office machines can add backups but cannot delete them.

BorgBackup

Deduplicating, compressed and encrypted backups over SSH, very efficient for Linux file servers. Pair it with borgmatic to write the schedule and retention policy in one config file, and restrict the SSH key to append-only use.

UrBackup

An open-source client and server system. Install the server on your storage VPS and the client on Windows or Linux machines; in internet mode, laptops back up files and full disk images whenever they are online.

Duplicati

Free backup software with a web interface, a good fit for offices without a full-time IT person. It encrypts on the client before upload and can send backups to the server over SFTP.

Veeam

If you already run Veeam Backup & Replication, a Linux server can be set up as a hardened repository with immutable backups. Check your Veeam licence and version documentation before relying on it for offsite copies.

Sizing

How much storage does your office need?

Move the slider to the amount of data you would need back after a disaster. We assume deduplicated backups with about 30 daily and 12 monthly snapshots.

50–500 GB Storage S1 Up to 500 GB of data, plus roughly 50% more for a month of daily changes and a year of monthly snapshots, comes to about 750 GB, leaving room on the 1 TB disk.
550–2,400 GB Storage S2 Up to 2.4 TB of office data grows to about 3.6 TB once daily and monthly snapshots build up, which fits the 4 TB of Storage S2 with some space for growth.
2,450–4,800 GB Storage S3 Up to 4.8 TB of data needs around 7.2 TB with snapshot history. Storage S3 gives 8 TB and four cores for faster pruning and integrity checks.
4,850–7,200 GB Storage S4 Up to 7.2 TB of data, about 10.8 TB with history, sits inside the 12 TB of Storage S4. Useful for offices protecting several file servers.
7,250+ GB Storage S5 Above 7.2 TB, Storage S5 gives 16 TB. At the top of the slider, 9.6 TB of data with history comes to about 14.4 TB.

This is an estimate: the real figure depends on how much of your data changes each day, how well it compresses and how long you keep old snapshots.

Storage S1

KES 2,000/mo

1 core
2 GB RAM
1 TB SATA storage
2 TB transfer

Order S1

Storage S2

KES 5,000/mo

2 cores
8 GB RAM
4 TB SATA storage
8 TB transfer

Order S2

Storage S3

KES 7,000/mo

4 cores
16 GB RAM
8 TB SATA storage
16 TB transfer

Order S3

Storage S4

KES 15,000/mo

6 cores
24 GB RAM
12 TB SATA storage
24 TB transfer

Order S4

Storage S5

KES 20,000/mo

8 cores
32 GB RAM
16 TB SATA storage
32 TB transfer

Order S5

Before you go live

Setting up offsite backups for an office

0 of 8 done. Tick them off as you go.

List what must come back after a disaster: shared drives, the accounting database, email archives and staff laptop folders.
Create a separate Linux user and SSH key for each office machine, and allow only key-based logins on the storage server.
Turn on client-side encryption in your backup tool and store the repository password somewhere other than the office, such as a sealed envelope with a director.
Make the repository append-only, or use rest-server with --append-only, so a compromised PC cannot delete old snapshots.
Schedule nightly backups after working hours and a retention policy, for example 30 daily, 12 weekly and 12 monthly snapshots.
Close every port except SSH (and your backup server port if needed) with ufw or nftables, and add fail2ban.
Set up email alerts for failed jobs and a weekly report, so a silent failure does not run for months.
Restore a real folder each month and a whole machine each quarter, and write down how long it took.

Built for Kenya

Things Kenyan offices should plan for

Upload speed and the first backup

Office lines are often much faster down than up. Check your upload speed before the first full backup, then decide whether to seed it over a few nights or weekends. After that, only changed blocks are sent, so nightly jobs are usually far smaller.

Personal data leaving the office

Payroll, HR files and customer records count as personal data under the Data Protection Act, 2019. Encrypting backups before they leave your network, keeping the keys yourself and recording where copies are stored makes conversations with the ODPC or auditors much easier.

Tax records you must keep

The Tax Procedures Act expects businesses to keep records for five years. A monthly or yearly snapshot of your accounting data and scanned receipts, kept offsite, means a KRA query does not depend on one old laptop still booting.

Questions

Business backups: your questions, answered

What is the 3-2-1 backup rule?

Keep three copies of important data, on two different types of storage, with one copy offsite. For a typical office that means the live files on the server or laptops, a local backup on a NAS or USB drive for quick restores, and an encrypted copy on a storage server in another location.

Can an offsite backup protect us from ransomware?

It can, if the ransomware cannot reach it. Use an append-only repository or separate credentials that office PCs do not hold, keep several weeks of snapshots, and make sure the backup server is not mapped as a drive letter. Then you restore from a snapshot taken before the infection.

Does HostingKE run the backups for us?

No. A storage plan is a server with full root access, and you or your IT provider install and manage the backup software, schedule and retention. That keeps you in control of the encryption keys, and means nobody at the host can read your data.

How long will the first backup take on our office internet?

Divide the data size by your real upload speed. As a rough guide, 10 Mbps of upload moves a little over 100 GB in a day if nothing else is using the line. Many offices seed the first backup over weekends, after which nightly incremental jobs are small.

Can we back up staff laptops that work from home?

Yes. Tools like UrBackup in internet mode, restic or Duplicati run on the laptop and send changes to the storage server whenever it is online, at home, in the field or in the office. Give each laptop its own credentials so one lost machine can be cut off on its own.

Is a SATA storage server fast enough for restores?

For backups, yes. SATA disks give large capacity at a lower price, and restores are usually limited by your office internet speed, not the disks. They are not meant for running busy databases directly, but reading back files and disk images is the job they suit.

Also on Storage Hosting

Ready to host your business backups?

Plans from KES 2,000 a month, paid by M-Pesa or card.

Size your server