How to Configure an Amazon S3 Repository N2WS

Posted By Rajesh Radhakrishnan April 01 2019

Previous post we have shared How To Configure The N2WS Appliance For AWS Backup .In this article, we will cover the configuration of the Amazon S3 Repositories in N2WS Backup & Recovery (CPM).

N2WS can back up your EBS snapshot data to Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 buckets. Using the N2WS Copy to S3 feature, you will have below options available

  • Define multiple folders, known as repositories, within a single S3 bucket
  • Define the frequency with which N2WS backups are made to a Repository in S3, similar to DR backup. For example, copy every third generation of an N2WS backup to S3.
  • Define backup retention based on time and/or a number of generations per Policy.
  • Enable client-side data encryption per Repository independent of server-side encryption implemented by AWS at the repository level.
  • Lower your backup costs. For example, customers who keep weekly or monthly backups for a year may benefit from reduced costs by moving these backups from EBS snapshots to an N2WS S3 Repository.

N2WS keeps backups in S3 in the Veeam VBR repository format – the data is stored as block-level incremental backups. N2WS can restore these backups to AWS, but customers can also use VBR capabilities to restore backups from the S3 repository to on-premises or public clouds.

Strongly Recommended:

  • S3 buckets used by Copy to S3should not be used by other applications.
  • Versioning at the bucket level should be disabled.

Notes: Before continuing, consider the following:

  • Copy to S3 currently supports only backups of Windows and Linux instances. RDS, DynamoDB, etc. are not supported.
  • Independent volumes will be supported in a future release.

Note: Most N2WS operations related to the S3 repository (e.g. converting EBS snapshots to the Veeam format, writing objects to S3, clean up, restoring, etc.) are performed by launching N2WS worker instances in AWS. The worker instances are terminated when their tasks are completed.

Prerequisites

  • AWS Account
  • S2 Bucket with Encryption enabled
  • User created in IAM with required permission
  • AWS account is configured in N2WS Appliance

Login to the N2WS Backup & Recovery (CPM) Appliance

Click on S3 Repositories Option

Click on Create New S3 Repository

 

Add the information required on the field available

  • Repository Name – Friendly name to identify

Note:- Repository name can only contain alphanumeric characters and the underscore (no spaces)

  • Account – AWS account configured with N2WS to access repository
  • AWS region – Region where you bucket is available
  • AWS Bucket Name – Bucket which is available in this region to add

Now you can view the created S3 repository

Now you can configure the AWS external repository to Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 update4 server.

 

As I mentioned above repositories can only be created in an encrypted S3 bucket, as shown below you can configure this from AWS console.

Conclusion

We have successfully configured the S3 repository to N2WS appliance in our environment and this is the one the featured introduced with N2ws 2.4 version which really helpful to users. This feature really support Veeam users to restore backups from the S3 repository to on-premises .