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Afi Platform Update - Sep 2025

This update introduces cloud-to-cloud SaaS EC2 instance backup support for AWS and brings enhancements to Afi backup for Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure, Google Workspace, and Kubernetes backup.

Update summary

Microsoft Azure backup

  • Introduced backup and recovery support for Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible servers
  • Added the ability to download selected folders from backed up virtual machine volume locally
  • Added the option to select the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada as a backup data location, in addition to the previously supported regions (the United States and Europe)
  • Supported cross-tenant data recovery for Microsoft Azure tenants
  • Improved backup and recovery stability for virtual machine and database backup

Amazon Web Services (AWS) backup

Microsoft 365 backup

  • Extended support of Intune configuration in Entra ID backup to include hardware configuration and management intent policies
  • Improved backup and recovery stability for Exchange calendar events, To Do tasks (Exchange tasks), and Entra ID

Google Workspace backup

  • Improved Google Drive recovery stability

Kubernetes backup

  • Improved backup and recovery stability

Platform


Detailed update description

Microsoft Azure

PostgreSQL database backup and recovery

The update introduces comprehensive protection for Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible servers, including database configuration, schema, and data backup to the Afi cloud, and provides the ability to recover databases back to the Azure cloud.

To provide convenient database data navigation and backup management, Afi supports an extensive set of features, including:

  • Ability to preview and download database configuration as Azure-native JSON
  • Ability to view database configuration changes history
  • Ability to browse and preview SQL schema and table data as well as download selected SQL tables as CSV
  • Global search across all or a selected set of backups in a tenant that allows you to easily locate a backup by various properties (ID, name, tag, location, etc.)
  • Annotation labels highlighting resource configuration and database schema changes

Screenshots below show configuration, table data, and schema preview for a sample test database.

Configuration

Table data

Schema

Virtual machines

Download folders from virtual machine volumes

In this update Afi adds the ability to download selected folders from backed up virtual machine volumes:

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

The update introduces comprehensive protection for AWS EC2 instances, including configuration and disk data backup to the Afi cloud, and provides the ability to recover virtual machines back to the AWS cloud with the same or custom configuration.

Backup is based on the AWS recovery point technology, ensuring crash consistency for multi-disk configurations as well as application consistency for certain Windows applications that support VSS.

Afi offers a unique feature set for navigating and accessing backup data, simplifying day-to-day backup management for large and constantly evolving production infrastructures, including:

  • Detailed configuration preview for a backed up EC2 instance, including its disks and network interfaces
  • Ability to download instance configuration as AWS-native JSON
  • Volume contents browse for supported volume configurations
  • Ability to download selected files and folders from inside a backed up volume locally
  • Ability to view instance configuration changes history and annotation labels highlighting the changes
  • Global search across all or a selected set of backups in a tenant that allows you to easily locate an instance backup by various properties (ID, name, tag, location, etc.)

Platform

Dynamic resource groups

In this update Afi introduces dynamic resource groups that you can create to match resources based on selected criteria (name, email, department, location, tag, etc.) and use these groups for auto-protection and access management.

Dynamic resource groups complement the existing mechanism when you can configure automatic protection and access settings for the resource groups automatically populated based on the provider-native resource groups (organizational units and Google groups for Google Workspace tenants, Entra ID groups for Microsoft 365 tenants) and can provide more flexibility for granular configuration.

You can create and review dynamic groups in a tenant on the Service → Protection → Dynamic groups tab:

To create a group, please click + Group and specify the rules and rule conditions that will be used for resource matching. Each rule defines a set of conditions that a resource should satisfy to be matched by this rule, and the resulting dynamic resource group will combine all the resources that are matched by at least one rule (it will aggregate the resource sets matched by each rule).

Per-resource storage dynamics charts

In this update Afi adds the storage history chart in the backup browse view that shows the storage changes during the last 365 days for the corresponding backup.

Per-resource backup storage history in resource protection reports

Resource protection CSV reports now contain historical backup storage statistics for each resource in the report, allowing you to easily identify backups that are growing faster than others. You can download a CSV report that contains protection and storage statistics for resources in the tenant on the Service → Settings → Info tab.

Different retention rules for active and archived resources

This update introduces the ability to configure different data retention rules within the same backup SLA policy for active and archived (deleted, suspended, etc.) resources. This way you can configure longer retention duration for backup snapshots in the active resource backups and shorter retention for archived resource backups, further reducing your backup storage footprint.

In addition, as one of the common use-cases, it is now possible to preserve only the latest backup snapshot captured before resource archival for archived resources.

Option to skip periodic reports when there are no issues

In this update Afi introduces the option to disable sending status reports for periods when there were no backup or licensing issues. If you want periodic reports to be sent only if there any issues that require attention, please turn on the Skip report sending if no issues detected toggle on the Configuration → Reports tab.