Managing the Thumbnail Service

Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures or videos, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words.

CTERA Thumbnail Service Requirements and Limitations

For test environments that use a single server, this server can be used for the Thumbnail service. For production environments that use more than one server, the servers for the Thumbnail service cannot be the main, primary, database server nor a preview server. CTERA Portal can include more than one application server defined as a thumbnail server.

To access the portal cloud drive directly to view the thumbnails, the user must have a subscription plan that includes the Cloud Drive Connect or Cloud Drive Full service. To collaborate on content, the user must have a subscription plan that includes the Cloud Drive Full service

The Thumbnail service requires separate storage for the thumbnails. This storage is configured as part of the service set up. In addition to the storage node that is used for the thumbnails, the standard storage node that is used for the CTERA Portal must also support Direct Mode for thumbnails to be generated.

You either need a trusted certificate for the portal, for example from GoDaddy, or you need to configure the browser to trust the self-signed certificate that is supplied by CTERA:

• Google Chrome Browser

  1. Right-click the Google Chrome shortcut on your desktop and select Properties.
  2. In the Target field append the following to the string: --ignore-certificate-errors
     Example Target field before the change: "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --profile-directory="Profile 1"
     Example Target field after the change: "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --profile-directory="Profile 1" --ignore-certificate-errors

• Microsoft Edge
  To configure the browser to trust the self-signed certificate that is supplied by CTERA, you have to first change Microsoft Edge to Internet Explorer mode

  1. In Settings, search for internet options and change the Allow sites to be reloaded in Internet Explorer mode (IE mode) value to field to Allow.
  2. Click Restart.
     The browser restarts.

  After restarting the browser:

  1. Click Internet Options.
     The Internet Properties window is displayed.
  2. Click the *Advanced tab.
  3. Scroll down to the bottom of the list and uncheck Warn about certificate address mismatch.
  4. Reboot the PC.

When configured to display thumbnails, the following file types are displayed as thumbnails: JPEG/JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, WebP, SVG. Only files less than 50MB can be displayed as thumbnails. The default maximum size for files is 20MB.

Thumbnails are displayed in the portal and not in Windows, macOS, nor a CTERA Edge Filer.