Imagine your IT provider disappearing tomorrow, or the technician who runs everything leaving or falling ill. Would you know what keeps your organisation running?
For many SMEs and public bodies, the answer is no, simply because their infrastructure is known and understood only by the people who built it.
Documentation that does not transfer
When a technician configures a server, they perform "imperative" actions: tell the machine "install this, update that". The server executes, but does not record the intent.
Result: when the person leaves, the knowledge leaves with them. The next provider starts from scratch, or worse, fumbles through a system they do not fully understand because they do not know what was done before or the real state of the machine. Changing provider becomes risky. Negotiating rates becomes hard. You are locked in without having chosen it.
That dependency causes a great deal of friction and even security gaps in today's information systems.
Another way to design infrastructure
There is an approach that flips this problem. With NixOS, system configuration is not something done "by hand" and then forgotten. It is written entirely in readable text files that live in one place.
Everything that makes the server work (installed services, security rules, access, network settings) is described in those files. If you change provider, the files stay with you. The new provider can read exactly what the previous one did, understand each choice, and continue without starting from zero.
It is the difference between a prepared dish and a recipe. With the dish, you do not know how it was made. With the recipe, anyone can read it, reproduce it and improve it.
What changes in practice
A NixOS infrastructure can be audited. An independent expert can review the configuration files and check for security gaps or dubious settings. You do not need blind trust: the configuration is transparent.
It can also be reproduced identically. If a server fails or you want to clone it, you can rebuild another in minutes with exactly the same configuration, with no approximations or forgotten steps. Knowledge lives in the system, not only in individuals.
A choice the State is starting to make
This approach is no longer marginal. DINUM (France's interministerial digital directorate), which steers the State's digital transformation, chose NixOS as the technological base for a flagship project: Sécurix, a hardened Linux distribution for public agents. A project designed precisely to give public institutions control of their IT environment again.
That is not accidental. NixOS meets requirements administrations know well: traceability, reproducibility, auditability, compliance, the same requirements that should guide any organisation serious about digital sovereignty.
Taking back control
Choosing a NixOS infrastructure means choosing an infrastructure that really belongs to you. Not only in the legal sense (the servers are yours anyway), but operationally: you can understand it, have it audited, transfer it, and change its guardians without rebuilding everything.
It is a technical decision, but first a governance decision.
HeBeKo helps organisations migrate to NixOS and keep it under control (audit, deployment, MCO). Learn more on NixOS at HeBeKo and digital sovereignty, or contact us.