N2W Backup & Recovery for AWS Standard Edition

It is our primary tool for backups for disaster recovery.

After acquiring two additional products in 2018, which we migrated from data centers to the cloud, N2W  allowed us to streamline our backup process for three products within one tool. This has saved us a lot of time and money compared to trying to build it ourselves.

Backup and recovery is obviously the most important feature. After that, we really appreciate two features: Schedules and Recovery Scenarios. Schedules is a very quick and easy way to stop and start EC2  instances on a schedule. We use this in our development environments to save costs. Recovery Scenarios has allowed us to streamline our annual disaster recovery testing time.

S3  backups, which I know is already in the feature pipeline, would be a useful improvement.

I have used the solution for more than six years.

I was in a different role when this decision was made.

There is a lot of value for the price.

I was in a different role when this decision was made.

Support has been very responsive, always going the extra mile to help. Our Customer Success representative has been top notch.

I use N2WS Backup & Recovery for the daily backup of our AWS  and Azure  Enterprise and Fastlane Customers.

Implementing N2WS Backup & Recovery improved our backup automation workflows in AWS . I now have centralized management for EC2 , RDS , EFS, and DynamoDB backups, with granular scheduling and lifecycle management. The ability to recover instances or volumes within minutes has improved our RTOs dramatically. Integration with IAM  and tagging policies made it easy to scale across environments while maintaining security and compliance.

Automated Backup & Recovery is a feature I have leveraged in my organization, and it is quite stable using N2WS Backup & Recovery for this purpose. Recovery speed is excellent with N2WS Backup & Recovery, which allows for instant recovery of virtual machines, databases, or files. The support of cross-region or cross-account recovery is an added benefit, protecting us if one data center or AWS region fails. This feature helps prevent data loss and ensures business continuity. I am able to replicate backups across AWS regions or even to different AWS accounts for disaster recovery. I can restore entire instances or specific files, folders, or volumes from snapshots. Cost optimization is achieved by automatically deleting outdated snapshots or moving older backups to Amazon S3  or Glacier for cheaper storage. Backup Policies and Lifecycle Management allow me to create flexible backup policies and retention rules.

I am quite satisfied with N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS backup and disaster recovery. However, it could be improved to include disaster recovery in cross accounts for Azure  in upcoming releases.

I have been using N2WS Backup & Recovery for over 5 years.

I use N2W  Backup & Recovery to manage my AWS  backups more efficiently and utilize S3  to store these backups.

Traditionally, AWS  doesn't allow snapshots to be stored in S3 , but this product is able to perform that function.

Having multiple policies and schedules handled for me takes the burden out of managing backups across multiple departments.

I am able to have backups that are automatically managed.

Restores are much simpler to perform due to the easy-to-use interface.

The most valuable features are EC2  and RDS  backups, as well as VPC capture.

It is able to encapsulate the important AWS services I need to have backed up via the product.

They could expand their offering to include Lambda function backups and other native AWS services, as these can be recreated through CloudFormation  or Terraform .

This would help those who are not familiar with Infrastructure as Code  to back up and restore these services without the overhead of understanding IaC  configuration.

I have used the solution for 5 years.

Not all features are available in the cheaper plans, so I recommend reviewing what features are needed and planning accordingly.

Our primary use case is comprehensive, automated backup and disaster recovery for our core production environment on AWS. We rely on N2W to protect our fleet of EC2 instances, which run our main applications, and our RDS databases, which store all critical customer data. Before N2W, we managed backups with a combination of manual snapshots and custom scripts, which was both time-consuming and prone to human error. Our goal was to find a reliable, 'set-it-and-forget-it' solution that could guarantee our data was protected and provide a clear, rapid path to recovery in a disaster scenario.

N2W has significantly improved our operational efficiency and our confidence in our business continuity plan. The biggest improvement is automation. By using tag-based policies, any new EC2 instance or database launched by our development team is automatically included in the correct backup schedule without any manual intervention from the operations team. This has saved us countless hours and eliminated the risk of a critical server being left unprotected. Furthermore, it transformed our disaster recovery strategy from a theoretical plan into a tested, practical reality. The one-click cross-region recovery feature is incredible. We’ve run disaster recovery drills in a fraction of the time it used to take, allowing us to validate our Recovery Time Objective and Recovery Point Objective with management. This peace of mind is invaluable.

Policy-based automation is the most powerful feature. The ability to define backup schedules, retention periods, and disaster recovery policies and have them apply automatically based on resource tags scales perfectly with our environment and enforces a consistent data protection strategy across the organization. File-level recovery has been a lifesaver on several occasions when a user accidentally deleted an important file. The ability to mount a snapshot and recover a single file or folder in minutes—without having to restore an entire 2TB volume—is incredibly efficient and minimizes disruption. Cross-account and cross-region disaster recovery gives us true resiliency. Knowing that our entire application stack, including its VPC configuration, can be rebuilt in a different AWS region with a few clicks is the ultimate safety net against a region-wide outage or major security event.

While the product is excellent, there are a couple of areas for potential improvement. The process for version upgrades, which sometimes requires deploying a new instance, could be streamlined to allow for a more seamless in-place update. It would be extremely useful to have the ability to set a retention period on manual backups. Occasionally, we take a manual snapshot before a major deployment, and currently, these can be forgotten, leading to unnecessary storage costs. Adding an 'auto-delete after X days' option to manual backups, similar to scheduled policies, would be a fantastic addition for cost management and general housekeeping. The EKS backup module should be a great feature, and it would have been a useful functionality to have for cluster backup management.

Before adopting N2W, we managed our backups internally using a combination of AWS's native EBS Snapshot Lifecycle Manager and a series of custom Lambda scripts. While this approach was inexpensive, it quickly became complex and brittle as our AWS environment grew. The scripts required constant maintenance, there was no central dashboard for monitoring success or failure, and performing a full recovery was a complicated, manual process. We switched because we needed a solution that was more reliable, automated, and less dependent on our internal engineers' time to maintain.

My advice regarding pricing is to look at it in terms of total value and return on investment, not just the license cost. While N2W is a paid product, the cost is easily justified by the significant reduction in engineering hours spent on managing and troubleshooting custom backup scripts. The pricing model, which is based on the number of instances you protect, is straightforward and predictable. The real value comes from the drastically reduced risk of data loss and the speed at which you can recover. The cost of a few hours of downtime would far exceed our yearly N2W license fee, making it a very worthwhile investment for any serious business running on AWS.

We evaluated two other main options before choosing N2W. The first was AWS's native service, AWS Backup. While it is a solid service and integrates well, we found N2W's user interface to be more intuitive and its disaster recovery orchestration to be more powerful and straightforward at the time of our evaluation. The ability to recover an entire instance, including its network configuration, into another region from a single console was a major differentiator. We also briefly looked at another third-party vendor but found N2W's deployment and billing through the AWS Marketplace to be much simpler and more transparent.

My main advice to anyone considering N2W is to start with the free trial. Set it up for a small but critical part of your environment and test a full recovery scenario, including a cross-region disaster recovery drill. Seeing how quickly and seamlessly you can bring a complex application back online is what will truly sell you on the product. It is a solution that delivers tangible peace of mind. The support team has also been very responsive the few times we've had questions. Overall, it is a robust, reliable, and user-friendly product that does exactly what it promises.

I use N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS  Free Trial/BYOL for backups, recovery, and disaster recovery testing. It makes it easy to automatically start and stop processes, simplifying the overall management of backup and restore operations.

N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS  Free Trial/BYOL has helped improve our organization by simplifying backup management and recovery processes. It reduced manual intervention, provided faster recovery times, and ensured compliance with our data retention policies.

The automation features and cost-optimization options also allowed us to manage backups more efficiently across multiple AWS accounts.

N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial/BYOL’s automated backup scheduling and policy-based management are the most valuable features. They enabled us to protect multiple AWS workloads without manual intervention.

The recovery speed was impressive, particularly for EBS snapshots, which helped reduce downtime during testing.

The cost-control features, such as snapshot lifecycle management and tiering to Amazon S3 , were also useful in optimizing storage costs.

• Allow users to define backup policies based on AWS  tags for better automation and scalability.
• When we create manual backup policies (especially for AMIs during patching cycles), there's no option to set a retention period. As a result, these backups are not deleted automatically, and we have to log in manually to clean them up. This process is error-prone, often missed, and leads to unnecessary storage costs.
• Suggested Enhancement: Introduce a retention setting for manual backup policies, similar to scheduled policies. This would allow users to:

• Set a retention period (e.g., 7, 30, 90 days) at the time of manual backup creation.
• Ensure automatic deletion of backups after the retention period.
• Avoid manual intervention and reduce the risk of missed cleanups.

I have been using N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial/BYOL for 5 years.

Before evaluating N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial/BYOL, we primarily relied on native AWS backup scripts and lifecycle policies. We switched due to the need for a centralized, automated solution that reduced administrative overhead and minimized the risk of human error.

The Free Trial/BYOL model is helpful for initial testing, but organizations should plan carefully for scale. Pricing can increase as backup volumes grow, so it is important to balance the level of protection with cost-optimization strategies such as tiering snapshots to S3  or Glacier.

I recommend running a cost analysis before committing long-term.

I evaluated AWS Backup , Veeam for AWS, and CloudBerry (now MSP360). N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial/BYOL stood out because of its tighter integration with AWS infrastructure and its proven track record with enterprise workloads.

N2WS Backup & Recovery for AWS Free Trial/BYOL is a strong solution for AWS-centric organizations that want reliable and fast backup and recovery with minimal operational burden.

However, teams should invest time in tuning backup policies and monitoring cost growth. It is best suited for enterprises with compliance or high-availability requirements.