migrationsovereigntyregistries

Migration Guide: Moving Your Package Registry into a Sovereign Cloud

bbinaries

2026-02-07

10 min read

Step-by-step checklist for moving npm, PyPI, and container registries into EU sovereign clouds without breaking CI or compliance.

Hook: Why your registry migration is now urgent

Slow artifact downloads, fragmented CI endpoints, and looming EU compliance checks are more than developer annoyances — they're business risks. In 2026, with major cloud providers offering dedicated EU sovereign regions and regulators tightening data-residency and audit requirements, moving internal package registries (npm, PyPI proxies, container registries) into a sovereign cloud is a practical compliance and performance priority for software teams.

“AWS launched an independent European Sovereign Cloud in early 2026 — a clear signal that sovereign-first architecture is now mainstream.” — market reports, Jan 2026

The objective (what success looks like)

By the end of your migration you should be able to check these boxes:

All production artifacts and mirrors are stored and served from EU sovereign infrastructure with documented data residency.
CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, etc.) continue to build and release without disruption, using new registry endpoints and preserved credentials or OIDC flows.
Supply-chain security is maintained or improved (artifact signing, SBOMs, auditing, and provenance).
Operational observability and cost are acceptable — download latency, cache hit rates, and egress costs are measured and within targets.

High-level migration strategy

Use a staged, reversible approach: Inventory → Pilot → Replicate → Cutover → Verify → Retire. This minimizes downtime, simplifies rollback, and keeps CI workflows intact.

Key 2026 trends that affect strategy

Major cloud vendors now offer sovereign regions with contractual assurances and isolation guarantees — leverage provider-managed services where possible to reduce operational burden.
Open standards for supply-chain security (Sigstore, in-toto, SLSA) are mainstream; integrate signing and provenance into the migration — see auditability and decision-plane patterns for guidance.
Hybrid CI models (cloud-hosted runners + self-hosted runners inside sovereign cloud) are gaining traction to keep secrets and network egress strictly inside EU boundaries.

Pre-migration checklist (inventory & policy)

Start here — this step consumes 30–50% of the project time but dramatically reduces surprises.

Inventory packages and images
- List all registries in use: public proxies and private repos (npm, PyPI, Docker, OCI registries, Helm charts).
- Export a dependency snapshot: npm-shrinkwrap.json or package-lock.json for Node; pip freeze and requirements; docker images list.
Classify data residency & compliance needs
- Mark artifacts that must remain in EU jurisdiction and those that can be replicated globally.
- Map legal controls: GDPR personal data in artifact metadata, NIS2 / sectoral rules, contractual SLAs.
Map CI/CD touchpoints
- Document where pipelines pull/push: build servers, external integrations, release automation, and deploy targets.
- Collect current credentials, tokens, and automation scripts that reference registry URLs.
Define availability & performance SLOs
- Define acceptable artifact download latency, cache hit ratio, and CI success rates — tie SLOs into observability and the audit decision plane.

Choose your sovereign architecture (patterns & tradeoffs)

Pick one of these common architectures based on scale, ops maturity, and compliance needs.

Managed sovereign registry services — Use the cloud provider’s sovereign registry (e.g., ECR-equivalent in EU sovereign region). Pros: minimal ops, provider SLAs. Cons: vendor lock-in and feature limits. See guidance on on-prem vs cloud tradeoffs.
Self-managed registry in sovereign VPC — Host Artifactory, Nexus, Harbor, Verdaccio on EC2/VMs or Kubernetes. Pros: flexibility, full control. Cons: operations overhead.
Hybrid: managed storage + self-hosted control plane — Store artifacts in provider object storage inside sovereign region; run registry control plane in a dedicated cluster. Pros: balance control and operational simplicity.

Security & compliance controls to include

HSM-backed key management for signing keys and secrets — ensure keys never leave EU-bound HSMs.
OIDC trust for CI platforms (short-lived tokens) rather than long-lived secrets.
Centralized logging, audit trails, and immutable artifact metadata retention.
SBOM generation and artifact signing (cosign/Sigstore) integrated into CI.

Step-by-step migration checklist

Below is an actionable checklist you can treat as a runbook. Each step includes commands or config examples where relevant.

Step 1 — Provision sovereign infrastructure

Create a project/account in the EU sovereign cloud region.
Provision networking: private VPC, peering to your CI environment if needed, and strict egress controls.
Provision storage buckets and set residency/location metadata.

# Example: create a private S3 bucket (pseudo-command for provider SDK)
provider-cli storage create-bucket --name company-artifacts-eu --region eu-sovereign

Step 2 — Deploy your registry (pilot)

Deploy a lightweight pilot for each registry type: Verdaccio for npm, a PyPI proxy using bandersnatch or devpi, and Harbor or a managed ECR/ACR variant for containers.
Use the pilot to mirror a subset of artifacts (top 100 packages or most-used container images).

# Verdaccio example: start container and point storage to provider object store (simplified)
docker run -d --name verdaccio -p 4873:4873 \
  -e STORAGE_PROVIDER=objectstore \
  -e OBJECTSTORE_BUCKET=company-artifacts-eu \
  verdaccio/verdaccio:latest

Step 3 — Mirror and replicate

Mirror public packages selectively. For PyPI, consider bandersnatch for full or partial mirror.
For container images, use registry replication tooling (registry:2 mirror cache, Crane, or registry garbage-collect tools) to pull frequently used images and push to the EU registry.

# PyPI partial mirror with bandersnatch (config snippet)
# mirror: allowlist of packages
packages:
  - numpy
  - requests
  - company-internal-lib

# run
bandersnatch mirror

Step 4 — Integrate CI with the new registry (preserve workflows)

Goal: no or minimal changes to job logic. Update only the endpoints and authentication method.

Replace registry URLs in CI job definition with new EU endpoints using centralized variables.
Prefer short-lived OIDC tokens or cloud-native IAM roles instead of long-lived static credentials.
Deploy self-hosted runners or build agents inside the sovereign VPC if your CI tool requires artifact egress to be inside the EU.

# npm example: update .npmrc to point at EU Verdaccio
registry=http://verdaccio-eu.internal:4873/
//verdaccio-eu.internal:4873/:_authToken=${NPM_TOKEN}

# pip example: pip.conf
[global]
index-url = https://pypi-eu.internal/simple/

# docker example: login in CI
echo $REGISTRY_PASSWORD | docker login -u $REGISTRY_USER --password-stdin eu-registry.internal:443

Step 5 — CI secrets & runner placement

Create secrets in your CI system that reference the new registry credentials stored in EU KMS or vault.
Set up OIDC trust between your CI provider and the sovereign cloud IAM so pipelines can request ephemeral credentials.
Where regulation requires, deploy self-hosted runners in the sovereign VPC so builds never leave EU infrastructure.

# GitHub Actions snippet (use OIDC to request short-lived credentials)
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      id-token: write
    steps:
      - name: Request token and login
        run: |
          TOKEN=$(curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer ${{ steps.oidc.outputs.token }}" ... )

Step 6 — Validate and test

Run smoke tests: install dependencies and pull container images from the new endpoints across all CI flavors.
Run performance tests for artifact download latency from developer locations and runner pools.
Run security tests: verify signing, SBOM generation, and artifact provenance are correct.

# Simple validation commands
npm install --registry http://verdaccio-eu.internal:4873/
pip install --index-url https://pypi-eu.internal/simple/ -r requirements.txt
docker pull eu-registry.internal:443/company/app:latest

Step 7 — Gradual cutover

Use DNS or feature flags to route a subset of developers and CI runs to the new registry.
Monitor errors, latency, and cache hit ratios. Expand traffic in waves (10% → 50% → 100%).
Keep a short rollback window and documented rollback commands.

Step 8 — Finalize, secure, and retire old endpoints

Enable strict lifecycle policies and immutability rules required by compliance.
Archive logs and metadata from legacy registries for audit retention windows.
Decommission old registries only after one retention window and after stakeholders sign off.

Validation checklist & KPIs to track

CI success rate before/after migration (target: ≤1% regression).
Average artifact download latency and 95th percentile.
Cache hit ratio in mirror/proxy registries.
Number of security findings in supply-chain scans (should be unchanged or reduced).
Audit completeness: presence of signed metadata, logs retained in EU region.

Operational best practices (post-migration)

Automate mirroring of the most-used packages and images continuously; use TTL-based cache invalidation.
Rotate signing keys using HSM-backed key management and rotate CI trust relationships yearly or after personnel changes.
Integrate SBOM generation and publish signed artifacts to the registry as part of every release pipeline.
Run periodic compliance checks and staff tabletop exercises to validate audit playbooks.

Case studies & real-world experience

Case study 1 — EU fintech: npm & Docker to sovereign cloud

Context: a mid-sized EU fintech needed to ensure all artifacts for production builds stayed within the EU to satisfy regulators and paying customers. They used a hybrid approach: managed object storage in the new sovereign cloud and self-hosted Artifactory in a sovereign Kubernetes cluster. Key steps they took:

Performed a 4-week inventory, identified top 200 npm packages and 50 container images to mirror.
Deployed self-hosted GitHub Actions runners on VMs inside the sovereign VPC so CI never transited outside the EU.
Adopted Sigstore/cosign to sign container images and integrated SBOMs in the release pipeline.

Outcome: The fintech achieved documented data residency, reduced cold-image pull times for EU developers by ~20%, and passed a third-party audit against their sectoral compliance requirements.

Case study 2 — SaaS vendor: PyPI proxy & gradual cutover

Context: a SaaS company with distributed engineering teams wanted minimum disruption. They launched a Verdaccio/DevPI stack in the sovereign region and used a staged DNS switch.

Pilot mirrored the top 500 pip packages and served them through a cached proxy.
Cut over CI for non-critical pipelines first and used Canary feature flags for developer IDEs to point to the EU proxy.

Outcome: No build regressions were observed during cutover. The company retained global CDN caching for public packages where legally allowed, but all internal and production artifacts remained in the EU sovereign cloud.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

Assuming credential compatibility — CI systems often use hard-coded registry URLs or tokens; audit and replace at scale using centralized variables.
Over-mirroring — Mirroring every public package causes storage bloat and higher costs; mirror by usage and popularity.
Ignoring supply-chain signing — If you migrate without signing, you lose provenance. Integrate signing early in CI migration.
Network topology surprises — Validate latency from developer locations and ensure private runners have the necessary ACLs.

Advanced strategies (2026 and beyond)

Multi-sovereign replication — For organizations operating in multiple regulated jurisdictions, use a replicated model where each sovereign cloud holds its own canonical copy and shares a signed provenance ledger; see edge auditability patterns for ledger design.
Policy-as-code for residency — Use policy engines (OPA/Rego) to enforce where artifacts can be created, moved, or deleted based on labels and regulatory tags.
Immutable registries — Use append-only storage and object immutability to meet legal retention requirements.

Audit-ready checklist

Proof of artifact residency: storage bucket logs and region metadata.
Access logs: IAM logs showing principals that accessed/pushed artifacts.
Signing records: cosign/Sigstore logs and KMS key usage audit trails.
SBOMs attached to all releases and retained for audit window.

Quick reference commands & snippets

# npm set registry
npm config set registry http://verdaccio-eu.internal:4873/

# pip install from proxy
pip install --index-url https://pypi-eu.internal/simple/ package-name

# docker login (CI)
echo $REGISTRY_PASSWORD | docker login -u $REGISTRY_USER --password-stdin eu-registry.internal:443

# cosign sign image (example)
cosign sign --key cosign.key eu-registry.internal:443/company/app:1.0.0

Final takeaways

Migrating registries into an EU sovereign cloud in 2026 is a cross-functional program: engineering, security, compliance, and cloud operations must collaborate. Using an inventory-first, staged approach preserves CI workflows and minimizes developer disruption. Embed signing and provenance into CI during migration, use short-lived credentials and OIDC, and plan for observability and auditability from day one.

Actionable first step: run a 2-week inventory sprint to map your registries, CI touchpoints, and the top 200 artifacts to mirror. That one preparatory step reduces migration risk dramatically.

Call to action

Ready to migrate? Get a tailored migration checklist and runnable CI templates for npm, PyPI, and container registries anchored to EU sovereign clouds. Contact our migration team for a free 30-minute assessment and downloadable runbook that maps directly to your CI provider and existing registry tools.

binaries

Contributor

Senior editor and content strategist. Writing about technology, design, and the future of digital media. Follow along for deep dives into the industry's moving parts.

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