Release Notes. Cloud Attached Storage

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Release Notes

Cloud Attached

Storage 2.5.32

January 2011

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Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on part of CTERA Networks Ltd.

CTERA, C200, C400, CloudPlug, NEXT3, Cloud Attached Storage, and Virtual Cloud Drive are trademarks, service marks, or registered trademarks of CTERA Networks Ltd.

All other product names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

The products described in this document are protected by U.S. patents, foreign patents, or pending applications.

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New Platform – CTERA C400

The new C400 Cloud Attached Storage appliance from CTERA Networks is a 4-bay Network Attached Storage (NAS) device that provides a unique hybrid of on-site and off-site data protection. A full-fledged enterprise-grade cloud storage gateway, the CTERA C400 supports up to 8TB of local RAID 5/6 storage for lightning-fast local backup, while the integrated cloud backup service provides an off-site copy for disaster recovery.

CTERA C400 users can access local and cloud-stored files from anywhere, by using standard file sharing protocols or via the Web.

The CTERA C400 can be installed in any office setting, from medium-sized offices to corporate environments, quickly and easily.

CTERA Agent

Server Applications Backup with CTERA Server Agent

CTERA Server Agent 2.5 supports backup and recovery of server applications.

Application backup and restore are supported, when CTERA Server Agent is installed on the following operating systems:

 Windows Vista

 Windows 7

 Windows 2003 SP1

 Windows 2008 Server

 Windows 2008 R2 Server Supported server applications include:

 Microsoft SQL Server

 Microsoft Exchange

 Microsoft Active Directory

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4 Cloud Attached Storage 2.5.32 Release Notes

To ensure completely consistent backup and restore, CTERA Server applications backup utilizes Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). VSS enables backups that are point-in- time and application-level consistent.

Note:CTERA Server Agents are licensed on a per-server basis. To license CTERA Workstation or CTERA Server agents, the device must be connected to Cloud Attached Storage services (CTERA Portal).

Licensing

The following number of CTERA Agents is licensed with your CTERA Cloud Attached Storage device:

Model Included Workstation Agents Included Server Agents

CloudPlug 10 -

C200 20 -

C400 50 -

For licensing of additional agents of either type, contact your CTERA-authorized reseller.

Disk-Level Backup

As a disk imaging solution, CTERA Agent 2.5 supports “disk-level backup”, also known as

“bare-metal backup”, meaning that CTERA Agent can back up an image of the computer’s hard drives to the CTERA appliance. CTERA Agent creates exact backups of a hard drive, sector-by-sector, thereby enabling faster restoration of the user’s operating systems, data, settings, and applications.

In case of an operating system error or a hard drive failure, the computer can be restored in full from the disk-level backup, returning the system to its exact state when the backup was performed.

When CTERA Agent is used in conjunction with CTERA’s Cloud Backup, a copy of disk-level backups is efficiently stored offsite for complete disaster protection, while maintaining a local copy for fast restore. CTERA’s advanced deduplication efficiently handles the disk-level backups, ensuring that only differences are sent over the Internet.

When CTERA Agent is used in conjunction with CTERA’s NEXT3 snapshots, users can easily roll back to earlier versions of their disk-level images. NEXT3 ensures that only differences are stored between versions, thus greatly reducing the required storage space.

Disk-level backup is supported when CTERA Agent is installed on the following operating systems:

 Windows Vista

 Windows 7

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 Windows 2008 R2 Server

Disk-level backups are stored using the industry-standard Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) file format.

VHD files can be mounted using standard tools to allow extraction of individual files and folders, and it is even possible to run the VHD disk image on a virtual machine (VM) for immediate disaster recovery after hardware failures.

CTERA Agent supports both automatically scheduled and manually invoked disk-level backups.

Note:

1. Disk-level backups operate over the Windows File Sharing protocol (CIFS).To perform Disk- level backups, ensure that the computer running CTERA Agent has access to the CTERA device using Windows File Sharing.

2. In Microsoft Windows 2003 Servers, disk-level backups are stored in NTBACKUP format. In all other operating systems, disk-level backups are stored in incremental VHD format.

Enhanced Scheduling Options

CTERA Agent 2.5 includes vastly enhanced scheduling options. Disk-level and file-level backups can be scheduled independently, using any of the following options:

 Manual Only

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 Start periodically every N hours

 Start at a specific time every day

 Start at a specific time on specific days of the week

Scheduling is managed using a policy-based approach. By default, global agent settings apply to all agents, allowing the administrator to easily specify a unified policy for the entire organization. If desired, it is possible to override the global scheduling settings and set a different schedule for individual agents.

My Computers Tab

The new My Computers tab allows managing connected CTERA Agents. Users can view their own agents’ files, configure backup settings, and restore files from the CTERA device to the agent. Administrators can perform these actions for all connected agents.

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Remote Restore and Restore Dashboard

CTERA Agent 2.5 includes remote restore capabilities. It is now possible to initiate restore operations for files and applications directly from the CTERA Web interface to the CTERA Agent, without any need for physical access to the PC itself.

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A new Restore Dashboard has been added, to facilitate easy restoration to remote computers.

Storage and File Sharing

Web-Based File Manager

The Cloud Attached Storage Web interface now includes a full-featured file manager, enabling users and administrators to view and manage files. The file manager allows

downloading and uploading files, as well as deleting, moving, and renaming files and folders.

If the full-text search engine is enabled (see “Integrated Full-Text Search Engine,” page 13), you can use the file manager to search for files containing specific text, located anywhere in the document’s file name or body. Furthermore, you can add the CTERA device as a search provider in your browser. This enables searching for files directly from your browser's search box.

Finally, the file manager enables viewing of all previous snapshots, whether stored locally or in the cloud.

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Guest Invitations

The new file sharing email invitations feature is a novel way to share files and folders stored on your Cloud Attached Storage appliance with other people, both inside and outside your network.

When the invitations feature is enabled, users can send other people email invitations to view specific folders or files stored on the appliance, or to collaborate with other users on a specific folder or file with full read/write access.

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The invitations feature supports Web-based file sharing, in which the invitation email includes an HTTP URL that contains a special code. When clicked, the code allows the invitee to view or edit the files from anywhere, using a Web-based file manager. The HTTP-based invitations are fully integrated with the CTERA remote access service, meaning that guests can view and collaborate on files from anywhere.

In addition, Windows File Sharing invitations are supported, in which a special path is sent to the invited user. The path allows the invitee to view files or collaborate on a project

transparently, using the standard Windows Explorer interface, by means of the Windows File Sharing (CIFS) protocol.

By default, invitations can be viewed by anyone, both authenticated users and

unauthenticated guests. If desired, the administrator can require user authentication for viewing invitations. This restricts viewing of invitations to users who have successfully authenticated with a valid username and password.

The administrator can also decide for how long each invitation is valid from the time of creation. By default, invitations expire after 30 days.

Project Collaboration

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The new Project Collaboration feature enables you to easily share files and folders with fellow workers, by defining collaboration projects. When the Project Collaboration feature is

enabled, users can create projects and invite co-workers to join the project as project members.

Project members receive an email notification inviting them to collaborate on the project.

They can then view files in the collaboration project and/or add files and folders to the collaboration project, depending on their permissions.

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Home Directories

A home directory is a folder that contains files owned by a specific user. Cloud Attached Storage 2.5 supports automatic creation of home directories for each user. When this feature is enabled, home directories are automatically created for each user on their first login. The administrator must select a specific share in which home directories will be stored.

Disk Quotas

Disk quotas enable an administrator to limit the amount of storage space allocated to each user per volume.

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To enable disk quotas, first enable the quotas feature for the volume. Optionally, you can define a default quota that will be used as the default storage space limitation for each of the volume users for whom a specific quota was not specified. Alternatively, you can choose not to specify a default quota, in which case an unlimited amount of space will be allocated to each volume user by default.

You can then configure a specific quota for individual users in the User Quota dialog box.

Entering a specific quota will override the default quota, if one was specified.

Note: Administrators always have an unlimited disk quota.

Integrated Full-Text Search Engine

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With the new full-text search feature, you can instantly search for files containing specific text, anywhere in the document’s file name or body.

Enhanced Backup Performance

CTERA C200 and CTERA C400 now use an embedded hardware-based encryption accelerator to speed up backup operations.

Configurable Autosharing

When external volume autosharing is enabled, a network share is automatically created each time a new external drive is inserted. By default, the share for such volumes is created with read/write access to the group “Everyone”, which includes all authenticated users. If desired, the administrator can specify a different access control list for automatically created shares or disable automatic creation of shares altogether.

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Support for Large Active Directory Domains

When configuring Windows File Sharing, the CTERA device can now join large Active Directory domains that include several thousands of users.

Support for Specifying Organizatinal Unit when Joining Domains

When configuring Windows File Sharing, the CTERA device can now join large Active Directory domains that require the Organizational Unit field.

Cloud Backup

Enhanced Backup Set Filtering

CTERA Cloud Attached Storage includes a condition-based filtering system for backup sets. It is now possible to create backup sets or exclude sets based on a number of criteria:

 File name (exact , prefix, or suffix match)

 Path (exact , prefix, or suffix match)

 File extension

 File size range

 Files modified before or after a specific date

Multiple conditions can be used to further restrict matches and are joined using “AND” . For example, one can create an exclude set that excludes all files whose name contains the word

“movie” AND whose size is greater than 2GB.

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Granular Restore from Device Web Interface

It is now possible to individually select any number of files and folders to restore from the cloud, directly from the appliance’s local Web interface.

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Backup Seeding Service

When you have a lot of information to back up, the initial backup to the cloud can take a long time. If your CTERA service provider offers a backup seeding service, i.e. the ability to create the initial backup by copying directly from a hard drive, you can speed up initial backup by using the new backup seeding feature. This feature enables you to store the files you want to include in your initial backup on a selected hard drive, which you can then deliver to the service provider.

The seeding hard drive can optionally be encrypted using strong encryption (AES-256 + RSA), so even if the drive is lost, there is very little risk to your sensitive information.

Note: This feature is available as a service from selected service providers.

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Administrative Tools

Export Event Log to Excel

It is now possible to export the Event Log to Microsoft Excel format.

Activity Monitor

The new Activity Monitor enables the administrator to monitor the disk read rate, disk write rate, the CPU usage, and memory utilization of the device.

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