New Features Introduced in Portal 8.3.3300.8
New Dashboard
The dashboard has been redone to provide more portal monitoring as well as a section detailing the new features.
The Notifications section has been changed to provide the same look and feel that the edge filer administrator has.
MCP Server
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) in CTERA lets AI assistants and agents securely interact with the CTERA platform as a framework for defining and managing a variety of context-based configurations across the platform. This feature facilitates dynamic policy enforcement and adaptive user experiences by leveraging contextual data to tailor services, enhancing both security and efficiency.
Embedding MCP support directly into the CTERA Portal enables LLMs, whether commercial tools like Claude and Cursor, or internally developed agents, to securely:
- Summarize file uploads in a shared folder.
- Retrieve document versions based on content.
- Generate and distribute a public or internal file link without a graphical user interface (GUI).
- Manage files using natural language instead of scripts or dashboards.
The CTERA MCP Server provides a natural language ability to perform actions that can be done using the CTERA SDK. The natural language used to talk to the agent that uses the MCP Server is internally mapped to an API in the CTERA SDK.
These tasks are executed securely control, enforced by encryption, permissions, and audit logging. There’s no need to copy data to external AI systems or learn new APIs.
Storage Nodes
The names of storage nodes that support the S3 protocol have been standardized.
The following new storage nodes are supported:
- DataCoreSwarm (S3)
- Dell ObjectScale (S3)
- Dell PowerScale (NFS)
- Dell PowerScale (S3)
- PureStorage Flashable (S3)
- VAST Data (S3)
Generic (NFS) has been renamed to NFS-Compatible and Generic (S3) has been renamed to S3-Compatible.
The following storage nodes have been deprecated:
- Caringo S3
- DDN Web Object Scaler
- EMC ECS (S3)
- EMC Isilon (S3)
- HGST Active Archive
- HGST Active Scale
- Hitachi HCP
- Isilon (S3)
- NetApp StorageGRID
NetApp StorageGRID Webscale (S3) has been renamed NetApp StorageGRID (S3)
The Use S3 Object Lock option is now also supported for Cloudian and Wasabi Cloud Storage (S3) storage nodes.
Continued Improvements to the Look and Feel
Additional improvements to standardize the look and feel. For example, to manage a storage node.
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New Features Introduced in Portal 8.3.3000.12
CTERA Portal version 8.3.3000.12 includes a number of new features for global portal administrators:
- New Look and Feel
- Backup to an S3 Bucket
- QumuloS3 Storage Node
- Devices Report
- New Email Templates
- Support for Bitdefender Antivirus
- Deprecated Features
New Look and Feel
The global administrator portal user interface has been modernized. For example:
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Backup to an S3 Bucket
In addition to PostgreSQL's built-in continuous archiving mechanism and PostgreSQL streaming replication that enables the continuous streaming and replication from a primary database server to a secondary, replication, server, you can also backup and restore the CTERA portal database to and from an S3 bucket.
Using CTERA Backup to S3 allows administrators to back up the portal settings, base database backup, and archival logs automatically to a designated S3 bucket, ensuring data integrity and availability through consistent backups while providing administrators with a user-friendly interface for backup configuration and status monitoring.
For more details, see Backing Up the CTERA Portal Database to an S3 Bucket.
QumuloS3 Storage Node
The new storage node, Qumulo, is now available.
For more details, see QumuloS3.
Devices Report
The Reports page has a new report, Devices.
For details, see Viewing the Devices Report.
New Email Templates
The following email templates have been added:
- Consul Service Unhealthy
- Database Backup to Bucket has Errors
- Envoy Service Unhealthy
- Nomad Service Unhealthy
- S3 API Service Failed
For details, see Email Notification Templates.
Support for Bitdefender Antivirus
The Bitdefender antivirus software is supported.
Deprecated Features
Features that are not supported have been removed, such as:
- Support for seeding stations (was under Settings > Seeding Stations).
- Ability to create a reseller portal.