We’re thrilled to announce the release of N2W v4.4 — a huge update for AWS and Azure customers bringing major features that revolutionize how enterprises secure their data, cut costs and enhance flexibility. This version not only provides true Multicloud security and protection, it slashes costs for the long-term with archival cross-cloud backup capabilities across AWS, Azure, and Wasabi.
Breaking Free from Vendor Lock-In
The future is no longer having to be tied to a single vendor’s storage services. Enterprises no longer want to accept non-transparent pricing, manual testing and risk of vendor downtime. N2W v4.4 changes the game by delivering true, transparent pricing and significant savings for Azure vault storage and revolutionary cloud-native snapshot technology, allowing you to immediately and easily store your backups across cloud providers (AWS, Azure and Wasabi).
Slash Your Azure Storage Costs by Up to 80%
One of the standout features in this release is our revolutionary approach to Azure storage costs. With N2W v4.4, you can now:
- Take advantage of transparent, predictable per-VM pricing at just $5 per VM (compared to Azure Backup’s variable pricing based on VM and volume size)
- Leverage optimal Azure Blob storage tiering for long-term retention
- Choose less expensive tiers compared to Azure Backup
- Store only incremental changes and restore immediately
- Secure your data with cross-subscription and cross-region disaster recovery
Let’s put this in perspective: For a 1.2 TB VM, Azure Backup would charge you $30 plus storage consumed, while N2W charges just $5 plus storage consumed. As your environment scales and retention requirements become stricter, these savings become even more significant.
Seamless Multi-Cloud Archiving with Wasabi
We’ve expanded our multi-cloud capabilities by adding support for Wasabi’s S3-compatible storage repositories. This integration allows you to:
- Automate archiving to Wasabi’s cost-effective storage
- Isolate your backup data from production in a different cloud
- Eliminate vendor lock-in risks
- Enable fully automated rapid recovery
- Meet regulatory requirements for off-site storage
This feature is perfect for organizations looking to enhance their cross-cloud protection strategy while keeping costs under control.
Advanced Snapshot Technology for Unmatched Speed and Flexibility
Our platform now leverages advanced cloud-native, platform-independent block-level snapshot technology that delivers:
- Maximum-speed read and write access across Azure, AWS, and third-party repositories
- Rapid restores from any repository
- Seamless integration with Azure APIs for access to both Azure and third-party repositories
This technology far surpasses native Azure backup capabilities by eliminating vendor lock-in and ensuring superior performance tailored to your unique needs.
Streamlined Failover and Failback with Custom Tags
Uncertainty during disaster recovery scenarios can add unnecessary stress to an already challenging situation. Our enhanced recovery scenarios functionality:
- Removes uncertainty when identifying resources during planned failover
- Ensures quick and efficient failback once operations are restored
- Introduces custom tags for recovery scenarios
- Enables retention of backup tags and addition of fixed tags (such as marking DR targets)
- Enhances differentiation between original and DR targets during failover
More Restore Options for FSx ONTAP in Recovery Scenarios
Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is the go-to choice for customers needing high-performance, feature-rich file storage. With N2W 4.4, recovery for FSx ONTAP just got a serious upgrade. You can now fully integrate FSx ONTAP into Recovery Scenarios, enabling:
- Streamlined full-stack recovery that includes FSx volumes alongside EC2, RDS, VPCs, and more
- Faster, automated, regular failover drills in disaster scenarios, without manual restore of network settings and with fully comprehensive reporting
- Policy-driven orchestration and prioritization of FSx ONTAP restores in your critical app environments
Why it matters: If your workloads rely on FSx ONTAP for shared storage—especially in high-availability or multi-AZ architectures—this enhancement ensures your entire environment can be restored as a unit, with less downtime and less risk of misconfiguration.
Major Cost Savings on S3 Compliance Locking
You can now lock down your critical data for compliance and cyber resilience—without locking yourself into a painful AWS bill. It’s ransomware-proofing that’s actually cost-effective.
One of the most powerful features in S3 is Object Lock with Compliance Mode, which helps protect backups from ransomware or accidental deletion. But until now, enabling this level of protection could come with surprisingly high API costs, especially in large-scale environments.
In version 4.4, N2W introduces a highly optimized compliance locking algorithm. This dramatically reduces costs for applying Compliance Lock at scale. While other solutions may protect your data at the cost of your cloud budget, N2W delivers full-scale compliance locking without the financial penalty, making Compliance Locking a no-brainer.
Targeted Backup Retries for Greater Efficiency
We’ve all experienced the frustration of a failed backup requiring a complete restart. Our new Partial Retry for Policy Execution Failures feature:
- Retries only the failed resources without reprocessing successful ones
- Saves valuable time and reduces costs
- Boosts reliability by targeting only failed backups
- Minimizes unnecessary policy-wide failures
- Aligns with customer expectations for smoother backup operations
N2W v4.4 Additional Resources
N2W v4.4 is now available to Microsoft Azure customers.
You can follow below documents and videos on how to upgrade to and utilize N2W 4.4
- User Guide: N2W Documentation
- Release Notes: Release notes for the latest 4.4
- N2W Upgrade KB: Upgrade instructions
- N2W v4.4 Overiew & Demo: TL;DR Episode 13 On-Demand
- Wasabi Integration Step-by-Step: Our blog on how to backup into Wasabi
Any questions or would like a demo? Talk to us! Email info@n2ws.com
