Here at N2WS, we’re committed to making things easier for its customers and fully support their backup, recovery, disaster recovery and data lifecycle management processes. For companies that have adopted a multi-cloud approach and have Microsoft Azure workloads, in addition to an AWS environment, we’re excited to let you know that support for Azure backup is now part of the N2WS Backup & Recovery console. With version 4.0, we now offer a one-stop backup and recovery experience for multi-cloud.
The newest release of N2WS is generally available and also brings additional support for data lifecycle management and other AWS supported services. The N2WS Backup & Recovery AMI is available from the AWS Marketplace and is ready for you to launch today.
Without further ado, let’s dive right in and see what’s new!
NEW CLOUD SUPPORTED
NEW Backup & Recovery for Microsoft Azure
This newest version of N2WS brings centralized data protection for those companies running resources both in AWS and Azure clouds. Version 4.0 offers the ability to backup and recover Azure virtual machines and disks using existing N2WS policy and scheduling features. Customers can use N2WS’s core feature of near-instant, one-click recovery, as well as monitor and protect both AWS and Azure resources from a single pane of glass.
To choose your Azure resources, users can choose which accounts you can back up from on the Accounts tab.
Be sure to make a note of all authentication creation IDs for security purposes for your Account which is generated one-time only. This includes your Directory (tenant) ID, Application (client) ID and Client Secret code.
As usual, created your policies under the Policies tab and view all of your resources under Backup Targets.
Choose to backup either Azure virtual machines or disks. Note that when choosing virtual machines, they will automatically include the disks attached to the machine. You can also choose to backup ony the disks. Under the Policies tab, customers also have the ability to switch between multiple subscriptions, as N2WS can configure backups on the Account level.
In your ‘single pane of glass’ Backup Monitor, easily switch back and forth between viewing AWS and Azure resources.
View all dedicated Azure and AWS reports in the Reports tab. Create reports on all backups and/or snapshots over time. Note N2WS reports detail backup activity down to the minute as reports are created based on Policies.
What does backup & recovery for Microsoft Azure mean for N2WS customers?
Provides multi-cloud flexibility, centralization and efficiency:
Many cloud customers use different tools and/or methods to manage their multi-backup cloud, which is time consuming and leaves room for error. With version 4.0, N2WS customers now have access to a single pane of glass to fully manage and centralize multi cloud backups for AWS and Azure. This is critical for efficiency, costs, security as well as full backup transparency to meet compliance requirements.
Using N2WS, you can now manage Azure data at scale and automate backup policies using flexible schedules and policies. And by using N2WS’ one-click recovery, customers can signficantly reduce their RTO for business critical workloads that cannot tolerate downtime, protect against increasingly detrimental ransomware attacks and access key metrics and reports – enabling you to share multi cloud backup summaries and reports with your team, auditors or C level management.
Customers no longer have to be limited to built in Azure backup only on the resource level, as this creates complications with multiple Subscriptions. With N2WS, you can configure complex and flexible backup schedules on both the Account and Subscription level.
NEW IN DATA LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT
NEW Beta Feature: Archive RDS snapshots to Amazon S3
Let’s take a look at what’s new for AWS workloads protected by N2WS. In Version 4.0, N2WS Backup & Recovery extends data lifecycle management capabilities by supporting Store to S3 for RDS snapshots. This current version supports MySQL RDS snapshots and will be extended to other RDS snapshots in future versions.
Important Note on Recovery of RDS: This is currently a beta feature due to the many types of databases and data available to recover. To make sure your use case is supported, N2WS recommends you do a recovery test on your own data before starting to use this feature in production.
First, under Policies, choose Lifecycle Management and enable Backup to S3. Choose how many days to retain data in a snapshot and how long you would like to keep the data in S3. Remember, snapshots created will be aged out based on the number of generations you choose, and you will have unlimited Store to S3 capability.
Next, simply enable RDS to S3 and choose which role within AWS will perform the archiving along with the appropriate encryption key.
Important note about RDS enhancement: Using AWS Backup or the native RDS backup tool, there is a limited number of snapshots you can create (35/month). For a daily backup this will suffice, however most AWS customers need much more than this. And although a script can be created, there is still a hardcoded limit of 100. As many of our customers are creating sometimes up to 5,000 backups/day, not only did this limit need to be addressed, the cost implication of keeping these backups was a concern.
With N2WS, as soon as an RDS snapshot is stored in S3, it is no longer included within the limit. That means that as long as you have under 100 generations, you have unlimited Store to S3 capabilities, plus you can keep the data for as long as you want without worrying about the cost. It’s a win-win!
What does Archive RDS snapshots to S3 mean for N2WS customers?
BIG Cost and Speed Enhancement: Data lifecycle management is now streamlined across services for EBS and RDS, saving admins time and greatly simplifying their archiving processes. In addition, compliance requests are easily met for long term retention and reporting analytics.
AWS customers are no longer restricted to the AWS native backup creation limit. They not only have unlimited archive capabilities, their storage costs are greatly reduced for large volumes of data by choosing the appropriate S3 storage tier, with just a few clicks.
NEW SERVICE SUPPORTED
NEW Amazon Aurora Serverless
N2WS has supported backup and recovery for RDS Aurora clusters since 2016. Amazon Serverless was then introduced back in 2018. Many claim that it is the future of cloud computing as Aurora Serverless provides the ability to automatically start up and shut down when not in use and handle resource scaling capacity, memory, CPU, etc. based on your application’s needs. It’s optimal for variable workloads and greatly simplifies the process by not having to deal with the deployment and management of a traditional database server. Because of its built-in automation, it’s extremely cost effective for infrequent and intermittent workloads.
N2WS has added Amazon Aurora Serverless as a backup target in Version 4.0.
As usual, users can choose their Aurora Serverless backup target under Policies.
When users choose Aurora Serverless as a backup target, storage size is already determined due to Aurora Serverless’ behind-the-scenes automated database storage scaling. With Version 4.0, users can perform Disaster Recovery for Aurora Serverless into either another region or another account.
What does backup and recovery of Aurora Serverless mean for N2WS customers?
BIG Speed Enhancement: Support for Amazon Aurora Serverless allows customers to backup their target and quickly recover with a few clicks, greatly reducing RTO to achieve optimal restore performance. By simply being able to add Aurora Serverless as a backup target, N2WS’ “single pane of glass” makes it easy to manage data protection for multiple services including DynamoDB, VPC, Redshift, Aurora RDS clusters, EC2, S3, FSx, and EFS.
NEW Support for AWS SSM Agent
AWS System Manager is a a centralized operations hub within AWS that allows you to track, resolve and automate operational issues across your resources. In addition, you can take this SSM agent and install it on your on-prem servers, thereby maintaining security and compliance for your hybrid cloud by scanning all of your resources and reporting on any policy violations. This SSM agent is automatically installed for EC2 instances from the AWS Marketplace. It triggers application consistent backups.
Previously, N2WS customers were using our own Thin Backup Agent which was installed on their Windows instances that needed to perform application quiescence using Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) or backup scripts (thereby creating application consistency when crash consistency was not efficient for their needs).
With version 4.0, customers can now leverage the AWS SSM Agent for Windows machines to perform application consistent backups. If you are already running instances from the AWS Marketplace, this is a huge time saver as AWS SSM Agent will update, manage and configure your resources by automatically, communicating with VSS.
Customers still have the option to use N2WS Thin Backup Agent for key processes such as running scripts simultaneously.
What does Support for AWS SSM Agent mean for N2WS customers?
BIG Speed and Simplicity Enhancement: If customers have no need to use any scripting ability, they can use the AWS SSM pre-installed agent, greatly speeding up and simplifiying their application consistent backup processes.
NEW N2WS Backup & Recovery v4.0 is LIVE – with support for Azure!
Not yet an N2WS user? Try N2WS newest version for FREE
Protect your AWS environment with our award-winning solution FREE for 30 days (after that it automatically converts to our Forever- Free Edition). Install and configure using our easy-to-follow video guide.
Already using N2WS Backup & Recovery?
You can follow below documents to upgrade to N2WS Backup & Recovery 4.0.0
- User Guide: N2WS Documentations
- Release Notes: Release notes for the latest v4.0.x CPM release
- N2WS Upgrade KB: Upgrade instructions KB
- Upgrade Video Tutorial: How to upgrade video tutorials
- N2WS permissions: minimal AWS permissions
Remember, you may need to upgrade your edition:
- Existing Standard users: upgrade to Advanced edition to take advantage of Store RDS snapshots to S3
- Existing Advanced, Enterprise & above users: upgrade using server instance
Any questions or would like a demo? Talk to us! Email info@n2ws.com
Jessica is Senior Global Campaigns Manager at N2WS with more than 10 years of experience. Jessica enjoys very spicy foods, lifting heavy things and cold snowy mountains (even though she lives near the arid desert).
