You are moving on
To another provider, or onto hardware of your own. The machine starts up somewhere else as itself instead of being rebuilt over a weekend.
For Hetzner Cloud
Your server. In a file you own.
A one-to-one copy of your running Hetzner Cloud server, on your own disk. It starts up as the same machine anywhere else — and it is still yours when the account is not.
Nothing to install. No downtime. Ready in minutes.
The file starts up on
- Proxmox
- VMware
- Hyper-V
- VirtualBox
- QEMU/KVM
Three moments this is for.
The account is locked
A suspension, a failed payment, a ticket that sits open for days. Your server and every copy of it are behind the same login.
It is all in one place
Snapshots and backups live in the same account as the server. One copy is not a backup — this is the second one.
Three steps, and your server never stops.
Nothing is installed on your server, and nothing is left behind in your account.
-
01
Connect your account
Paste a Hetzner API key and we list your servers. Disconnect it again whenever you like.
-
02
Pick a server
Hetzner freezes a copy of its disk while it keeps serving traffic. Your machine is never restarted and never logged into.
-
03
Download the file
A few minutes later it is yours, with a small tool that turns it into a disk for Proxmox, VMware, Hyper-V or VirtualBox.
Every step is written out, including what it costs you at Hetzner.
Included with every export
A machine again. Or just the files.
The hetshield tool downloads your export and writes the disk your hypervisor wants — or opens the files inside without booting anything.
- One file, no installer
- For Windows, macOS and Linux. Get it from your export page, run it, delete it when you are done.
- Yours after the link is gone
- The download is kept on your computer, so converting and browsing keep working long after the seven-day link has expired.
- Knows what it wrote
- It reads the disk's firmware off the partition table and tells you whether the machine needs UEFI or BIOS — the one setting that has to be right.
- Never required
- The download is a plain disk image and the docs show the manual route too. If we vanished tomorrow, the file would still be yours to start.
One price. Any size.
A 20 GB server and a 640 GB server cost the same.
One export
One server, any disk size, one file back.
$29 per server, plus VAT where it applies
Export a server- Any disk size, same price
- Seven days to download it
- A tool that converts it for your hypervisor, or opens its files
- Restore steps written for your machine
- Refunded in full if the export fails
- Your server keeps running throughout
Refunded automatically if the export does not finish.
Questions people ask first
- For undoing a bad afternoon, yes. But both live in the same account as the server and neither can be downloaded. Keep using them, and keep one copy elsewhere.
- Yes, if your server can be offline for the whole read — rescue mode means a reboot. With hetshield your server never stops, and you get the conversion tool and restore steps for your hypervisor.
- No. The copy is taken while the machine keeps running and serving traffic. It is never restarted, never logged into, and nothing is installed on it.
- Object storage in the EU, reachable only through your private download link. It is deleted after seven days.
- Start it. The hetshield tool turns it into a Proxmox, VMware, Hyper-V or VirtualBox disk in one command, and the machine boots as itself.
- Yes. The hetshield tool that comes with every export opens the files inside the copy on your own computer — read a config, copy out a folder — without booting anything.
- It is stored encrypted and used only while an export runs. Hetzner has no read-only key that can make a copy, so it needs write access. Disconnect it whenever you like and we delete it.
- Hetzner keeps volumes out of the copy it makes of a server, so no export like ours can contain them. We show you which of your servers have one before you pay.
- Cloud servers only: the export works through the Cloud API, and Robot servers have no equivalent. One export per purchase, started by you, with no scheduling.
A few minutes from now, your server is a file on your disk.
Connect a Hetzner account, pick a server, and download the file.