Managing Volumes

Volumes are logical partitions on the CTERA Edge Filer that users can access. You create a NAS volume and the CTERA Edge Filer acts as a files server for NAS volumes which can be accessed using any of the supported file sharing protocols.
The CTERA Edge Filer supports XFS file systems. The following conditions apply:

• Open files are not backed up during cloud backup.
• XFS volumes cannot be shrunk. CTERA recommends starting with the required storage and then increasing the storage when using XFS rather than starting with a large storage which cannot be decreased.

When the volume defined in the CTERA Edge Filer does not use all the available storage, you can edit the volume to enlarge the volume size.

Creating and Editing Volumes

To create or edit a volume:
Note: To create a volume, you must have an array defined. H and X Series edge filer are supplied with predefined RAIDs. A V Series edge filer has an array defined as part of the initial setup, described in the installation guide.

1. In the CONFIGURATION tab, select Storage > Volumes in the navigation pane.The Volumes page is displayed.
   If a volume was not created when the CTERA Edge Filer was installed, the page is empty.
   
2. Click New or select the volume to edit and click Edit.
   The Specify Volume Details screen is displayed.
   
   Storage Device – Either an array on which to create the volume or a drive that is not part of an array. The size of each array and drive is shown in brackets.
   Volume Size – You can either drag the slider or enter a number of GB. CTERA recommends that the volume is as large as possible.
   Enforce storage quotas – Check to limit the amount of storage space allocated to each non-administrative volume user. Each non-administrative user can then be allocated a specific storage space quota. If quotas are not enabled, then each user is able to use unlimited space on this volume.
3. Click Next.
   When defining a new volume you can choose to encrypt the volume.
   
   Make this volume encrypted – Encrypt the contents of this volume using a passphrase. This option is disabled when editing a volume.
   Passphrase –The passphrase to use to access the volume.
   Retype Passphrase –The passphrase retype to confirm it.Volume encryption is supported both for standalone volumes and volumes residing in RAID arrays. The encryption method employed is the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256 CBC ESSIV). Enabling volume encryption may reduce performance.
   Note: It is important to keep the passphrase in a safe place, as there is no way of retrieving it if you lose it. If you reset your CTERA Edge Filer to its default settings, you cannot access the volume without this passphrase.
4. Click Next.
   The Name this Logical Volume window is displayed.
   
5. If the volume is a new volume, enter a name for the volume.
   Note: You cannot change the name of an existing active volume.
6. Click Next and then click Finish.
   The volume you created is displayed in the Volumes page.