The newest release of N2WS Backup & Recovery is generally available on the AWS Marketplace with support for S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval! N2WS v4.1.1 has a host of additional enhancements improving security even more and providing significant cost savings for workloads running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. In this post, we’ll run through the top new features and enhancements:
NEW IN DATA LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT
NEW Archive Tier Support: S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval
N2WS supports multiple Amazon S3 and Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes to best fit your specific RTO needs.
Amazon introduced Glacier Instant Retrieval archive storage class back in November 2021 – essentially a win-win tier. S3 Glacier Instant Retrieval is not only extremely low-cost (intended for data that is rarely accessed), but also has near instantaneous retrieval (milliseconds), similar to S3 Standard. In addition, retrieval fee per GB is comparable (only slightly higher) to Glacier Flexible.
N2WS customers can now have the best of both worlds with v4.1.1 by automatically Archiving to Glacier Instant Retrieval storage vaults- getting those very low-cost capabilities of AWS Glacier along with instant data retrieval.
Significant Performance/Speed Enhancement: Store to S3
N2WS customers can store image based backups of EC2 instances to Amazon S3 and Amazon S3 Glacier utilizing secure, durable, and extremely low-cost storage tiers. In addition, N2WS Snapshot Importer was introduced a few versions ago bringing immediate cost savings with the ability to import existing (previously created, not taken by N2WS) EBS snapshots. Customers were so happy with this feature they began importing years worth of snapshots, sometimes thousands of them, to take advantage of lower storage costs. Thanks to our developers’ tweaks, savings is even more instantaneous even with very large data transfers. We are happy to report that N2WS Store to S3 feature is now 66% faster!
NEW IN MONITORING
NEW Enhancements in Audit Logs
N2WS Backup & Recovery customers have had the ability to generate audit logs to help meet diagnostic, security and compliance needs. N2WS Backup & Recovery v4.1.1 offers new detailed enhancements for AWS and Azure Audit Logging, now with specific details as to who, what and where the changes to users, accounts, policies, schedules, etc were made.
This ability to go behind the audit trail even further allows customers to much more easily identify any errors, mistakes or unusual activities. This transparency naturally brings an uptick in security to our backup operations.
Best Practices: We do recommend that Audit Log retention be at least as long as the maximum retention of your backups. For example, if you have backups for 36 months, be sure to adjust your Audit Log retention to 36 months, at the very least.
NEW IN SECURITY
NEW Re-Encryption with Custom KMS Key for Cross-Region & Cross-Account DR
Default encryption keys are provided by AWS to encrypt all volumes. The downside to this features is that these KMS keys cannot be distributed cross-region or cross-account – they are only available in the region they exist. Customers previously needed to create and manage scripts to de-encrypt and re-encrypt data in a new region or account.
For customers who have existing volumes encrypted using the default KMS key, N2WS v4.1.1 now has the capability to easily copy this data cross-region and cross-account. Customers not only save on management time as there is no longer the need for scripts, they enhance their security by allowing N2WS to copy their data to another region or account without the need for the default KMS encryption key. In addition, customers save significantly on costs since the same KMS key can be used in multiple regions and accounts without the need to de-encrypt and re-encrypt.
NEW VPC Capture & Clone Enhancement
N2WS supports the protection of your Amazon VPC configurations with its VPC Capture & Clone feature. Most network admins know that it’s not enough just to manage backups. Enterprise environments often need to be bootstrapped in other regions with an identical infrastructure setup. VPC Capture & Clone is quick and easy to use and keeps your network recovery environment ready for identical restore.
Managed Prefix lists consolidate management within a VPC, sort of as a one stop shop. Within AWS Transit Gateway, managing multiple security groups just became a whole lot easier for network admins. With N2WS v4.1.1, customers can add much more to their network configuration cloning – in addition to security groups and routing tables they can now add many more intricate network management rules such as VPN connections and VPN Gateway by automatically cloning their managed prefix lists.
NOW GO FULLY FEATURED with Standard Edition
We are pleased to announce that this latest version of N2WS Backup & Recovery gives all Standard edition customers access to nearly the same features as our Advanced and Enterprise customers — this includes Data Lifecycle Management Store to S3, VPC Capture & Clone, AnySnap Archiver™ and much more.
As our customers’ cloud environments become more complex, it was important for us to have a starter edition that is fully functional in order to see what was capable as AWS and Azure environments grow. Standard edition customers can now easily manage their smaller environment backup procedures, coordinate bulk recoveries for testing purposes, perform long-term data storage for immediate cost savings and be confident that the added value they get with N2WS Backup & Recovery increases exponentially as they scale.
NEW N2WS Backup & Recovery v4.1.1 is LIVE – with support for Glacier Instant Retrieval!
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 4.1.1
- User Guide: N2WS Documentations
- Release Notes: Release notes for the latest v4.1.1
- N2WS Upgrade KB: Upgrade instructions KB
- Upgrade Video Tutorial: How to upgrade video tutorials
- N2WS permissions: minimal AWS permissions
See everything in action in our NEW N2WS Release Overview & Demo.
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).
