We have tested many cloud storage devices over the past few years and many have had an impressive array of features, but CTERA’s may be the most complete, feature rich hybrid cloud storage product we have tested to date. The CTERA Cloud Attached Storage C400 appliance provides file services across CIFS, NFS and even AFP (Apple File Protocol). It provides automatic cloud backup of those files and even includes an agent that will back up files on local systems to be included as part of the cloud backup.

Initial Setup

As always we start our test drives, like many of our readers will, by jumping right in to see how far we can get without reading the manual. After all, the manual is what you turn to when you get stuck, not what you start with. CTERA must know that’s how life is in the real world because the guided initial setup could not have been easier. There are a series of wizards that walk you through just about everything.

The first step was installing drives into the system, which comes with no hard drives installed, unless you order it that way. This allows a managed service provider or end user to select the drive type and capacities that make the most sense for their customers or their environment. In our case this meant the opportunity to test our newly supplied 3TB drives from Western Digital. We’re curious to see not only how reliable these high capacity drives are but also if they provide acceptable performance. Thus far we are pleased with both.

When the CTERA C400 started up we logged in to the very well-done management GUI and began to configure the system. The CTERA boots from flash so no capacity is wasted on the installed hard drives. As you can see below the first window that appears is to configure the storage, walking us step by step through setup.

The next step was to connect the C400 to the cloud. Once again there was a wizard that walked us through that process, a very easy process.

Finally, with the storage system set up and 3TBs of mirrored storage available to us we began to put the unit to work by creating users and shares and beginning to access those from our various workstations. While we’ll go into the backup capabilities of CTERA in more detail in our next test drive update, as you can see in this video and screenshot, user data that is stored on the C400 is automatically backed up to the cloud.

Storage Swiss Take

Our first impressions of the CTERA C400 are very positive. The unit represents a very cost effective, straight forward way to leverage cloud storage in a small business. Since the videos have been recorded we have moved the unit into production use and it’s backing our files up every day. There are many more areas to explore but next we will specifically look at deploying the backup agents.