N2WS Install Guide
Activate your free trial of N2WS Backup & Recovery in 14 minutes. Learn how in this step-by-step video or follow the guide below.
Schedule automated backups and disaster recovery for your AWS EC2 instance with N2WS.
Installing N2WS in just 5 Steps.
“N2WS really shines with instant recovery – it’s automated and straightforward.”
1. Create a New Policy
In your EC2 console, go to IAM to create a policy. Create a new policy. Add the JSON permissions, which you can get from this KBA. Review the policy, give it an easy-to-remember name, like “N2WSCPM”, and create the policy.
2. Create a Role for N2WS
You need to create a role to assign that policy file to. Create a role for EC2. From the drop down options select, “Allows EC2 instances to call AWS services on your behalf”. Assign the permissions policy that you just created, “N2WS Policy”. Give this role an easy-to-remember name like, “N2WS CPM Role”. Create the role.
3. Install from the AWS Marketplace
First, launch your instance. Then, from the sidebar, visit the AWS Marketplace, search for “N2WS” and select the Free Trial BYOL edition. From there you can configure your instance details following the steps below.
Instance Size:
The instance type T-2 small is perfectly fine for the free edition. To determine the optimal instance size, read this KB article.
VPC Settings:
N2WS needs the ability to reach AWS endpoints and to get out to the internet. If you prefer other methods like VPN or IP tunneling, that’s fine too.
Security Groups:
You can let N2WS create a security group and open up the proper IP protocols and also the ports as well (in case you need to SSH into that machine).
Key Pair:
Finally, create or choose a key pair to authenticate. Now you have everything you need to launch this instance into your EC2 console.
4. Access & Validate N2WS
Select the N2WS instance to grab the public IP address. Copy the IP address and paste it into a new browser tab. It will tell you that your connection is not secure. That’s fine because we’re using a self-signed certificate to access the page. So just add an exception and the page will load. Then you’ll need to copy the instance ID and paste it into the dialogue window to validate.
5. Set credentials & configuration
In the next window, choose your username and password. The username you’re picking here is actually the admin root account. So you could call this “admin”. Set a password and choose a time zone. This is important because your backup schedules are going to be using this time zone as the base.
You are all set to start creating policies, schedules and backups!
Creating a backup policy for N2WS.
“N2WS is simple, the dashboards give us a fast look at the status of everything.”
1. Configure an account
Click “Add new account” and give this an easy-to-remember name. This is going to be the AWS account that you want to backup. Choose the backup account type and use the N2WS instance IAM role.
2. Set up a schedule
Create a schedule, such as “Daily” that will happen every day at midnight, for example. And choose the policy that’s just to backup N2WS called cpmdata. You can lower the “generations to save” number to 3. Associate this policy with your schedule and apply.
3. Configure disaster recovery for N2WS
Click on the DR button to enable disaster recovery. Then choose any region to serve as your disaster recovery region. This will trigger N2WS to create a disaster recovery backup of itself in that region. And that’s it!