N2WS vs AWS Backup
Read on to understand the critical differences between AWS Backup vs N2WS. And, regardless of which tool you choose to use, you should download our Disaster-Proof Backup Checklist to setup your backup the right way.
Peace of mind for your team
Backup interval
Storage cost savings
Data sovereignty and security
N2WS reduces your attack surface, letting you define security groups and restrict communication to specific workstations. With N2WS, it's all about your control, your environment, and your peace of mind. You’re not sharing it with anyone else.
Protect encrypted resources
Easily perform DR backups of encrypted resources into a different region or account. With N2WS, you can ensure data security without compromising efficiency, creating a backup strategy that is straightforward and avoids time-consuming workarounds.
- Identify encrypted resources and switch out keys to a custom encryption key.
- Perform DR backups of encrypted resources into other accounts or regions.
Never lose valuable data
Another key difference is the backup interval. The smallest backup interval that AWS Backup offers is 60 minutes. And, because it's a service that many other customers are using too, there's only so much it can do. It could start at 12:17 or it could start at 12:47, for example, within a 1hr window.
Our smallest backup interval is 60 seconds. And for customers in the healthcare and financial sectors, who need to ensure they don't lose any data, they can’t afford a 1hr backup window.
- Minimize RPO with a 60sec backup interval.
Ensure data is recoverable
How often do large corporations perform DR drills? Maybe once a year, because there's usually a lot of time and money involved. With N2WS, you have the ability to perform a dry run, which does almost everything (just short of spinning up the resources) so there’s no cost involved.
You can tell N2WS to perform a DR drill on a weekly basis and, at the end of it, send a report. This whole process is free of charge —because you’re not actually spinning up resources (although you have that option, too) and N2WS doesn’t charge you to perform the service.
- Ensure your data is always recoverable with automated DR drills (free of charge).
Want to understand the differences between N2WS vs AWS Backup for a particular use case? Talk with an engineer to see how these features could work for your team. We’re here to answer your questions and help you get the biggest ROI from N2WS.
Protect network configurations
If you imagine bringing back an on-prem server and putting it on your desk, but without any cables, routers, switches, or connectivity… you can tell that’s not going to do much good. And it's not any different in the cloud. Without your VPC configurations, subnet routing groups, VPN, etc, you’ll have no way for your users to access the resource. N2WS protects all your network configurations so you can restore back to a production state.
- Easily enable automatic backups of all your VPC configurations.
- Recover VPCs to any region or account, not just the original region.
- Clone a network configuration into a CloudFormation template to turn your infrastructure into code.
Easily orchestrate a failover
When your production environment goes down, you don’t want to be scrolling through snapshots to restore them one by one. With N2WS Recovery Scenarios you can pre-configure everything that needs to happen if something goes down.
- Configure automated failover into a different region or account.
- Change instance sizes or the IP address (or any configuration).
- Set the order in which resources should come back online.
Restore only what you need
Another key difference between N2WS and AWS Backup is the ability to perform file and folder level recovery. So if you have a 1.2TB instance, you don't need to recover that whole instance to recover a file that someone asked you to restore. No, with N2WS FLR, you can dig into a backup and just recover what you actually need.
- Get multi-generation file and folder level recovery (FLR).
- It works with Windows or Linux —even with encrypted resources.
- No agents, no pre-indexing, no cataloguing —easy ad hoc FLR.
Cost savings and storage optimization
N2WS has key built-in features to help you reduce storage and compute costs automatically —like Resource Control, archiving with optional ZeroEBS, and more.
Reduce costs on DR backups
With AWS Backup, like most tools, when you choose to take DR backups, you're effectively doubling your backup cost —because you're creating two backups, one operational backup and one DR. But with N2WS, you can choose a different number of snapshots to keep for DR.
- Choose how many DR snapshots to keep.
- Automatically archive snapshots into cold storage after 30 days.
- Lower DR costs by reducing storage needs.
Lower resource compute costs
If you have resources that don't need to be running outside of business hours (like RDS databases used for testing), N2WS Resource Control allows you to schedule those to turn off. In the first year of using N2WS, Gett saved over $100,000 with just the Resource Control feature alone.
- Reduce costs for non-critical workloads.
- Schedule resource groups to shut down during off-hours.
- Automatically add resources via tagging.
Archive into any S3/Glacier tier
In terms of cold storage, when it comes to N2WS vs AWS Backup, the way they work is totally different. N2WS archives incrementally, rather than full snapshots, to save you money. Also, N2WS allows you to archive into any S3/Glacier storage tier in any region or account.
- Lower storage costs by archiving into any S3/Glacier tier.
- Use N2WS ZeroEBS to delete the snapshot for more savings.
- Import + archive existing snapshots with N2WS AnySnap Archiver.
Easy configuration and management
In N2WS, you can see all the backups that have occurred in different account —and they don't need to be under the same management account. You can also see all the backups in all the different regions and even different clouds you have connected.
Manage all your accounts (in AWS + Azure) from a “single pane of glass”
With N2WS, you have the option to choose whichever cloud offering works for you. Plus, you can manage 100s of accounts—even if they’re not in the same AWS organization. This makes it perfect for MSPs and multi-tenancy.
Customize and automate your compliance reporting
If you want a set of pre-defined report templates, AWS Backup has that. N2WS, in comparison, gives you full control to customize your reports. Plus, if you’re using Datadog, Splunk, or Bocada... we have built-in integrations with those third-party tools.
Onboard new customers in minutes with N2WS RESTful API
Our RESTful API is useful for many things. And what our MSP customers love it for is onboarding new customers. Because N2WS RESTful API allows you to automate the importing of large amounts of data in a few easy commands.
Single pane of glass for multi-cloud management
The official party line of AWS is that no other cloud provider exists. And so it’s just not possible to be able to manage Azure backup or recovery from within AWS Backup. With N2WS, you have the option to choose whichever cloud offering is going to work for you.
Lower storage costs by archiving into cold storage
Yes, AWS Backup does have the ability now to archive EBS snapshots into cold storage. But this cold storage isn't incremental. So that means every archive that you're creating is going to be a full backup. N2WS allows you to archive incremental backups into any S3 or Glacier tier.
Reduce compute costs of non-critical workloads
If you have resources that don't need to be running outside of business hours (like RDS databases used for testing), N2WS Resource Control allows you to schedule those to turn off. In the first year of using N2WS, Gett saved over $100,000 with just the Resource Control feature alone.
AWS Backup vs N2WS
Comparing key features
When it comes to security, recovery, and optimization, N2WS has the critical features that growing teams need.
AWS Backup
N2WS Backup & Recovery
DR backups of encrypted resources
60-second backup interval
Scheduled DR drills & “dry runs”AWS Backup let’s you test restores but they charge you per backup policy tested. Also, because the instance must be terminated, it’s not possible to orchestrate a failover.
Recovery Scenarios
Multi-gen file/folder level recovery (FLR)
Support for Azure and cross-cloud
Backup & restore VPC configurations
Archiving into Amazon S3/GlacierThe archiving AWS Backup offers is to a generic “cold storage” tier that costs the same as standard S3 but takes as long to restore as Deep Archive. And—it archives full backups every time.
Resource Control
Custom DR backup retention
Single management dashboardWith AWS Backup, you can manage all your AWS accounts that are within the same organization. If you want to manage accounts outside of that or in Azure, then you need something like N2WS.
Auditing & compliance reportingWith N2WS you can customize your reports and integrate with Datadog, Splunk, and Bocada. With AWS Backup, you have to choose from their set of preconfigured report templates.
Access to an easy RESTful APIN2WS RESTful API allows you to automate new user or customer onboarding in minutes. AWS API requires you know Lambda scripting.
Multi-tenancy for MSPs
Want to understand the differences between N2WS vs AWS Backup for a particular use case? Talk with an engineer to see how these features could work for your team. We’re here to answer your questions and help you get the biggest ROI from N2WS.
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Easy to setup, restore processes are easy...highly recommend.
…a great product that fills in the gaps in the AWS architecture.
Set it up…and then forget about it, no maintenance needed.
