Today’s organizations face a dual challenge: managing explosive data growth while addressing costs, security threats, and increasingly strict compliance requirements. Addressing this challenge requires a different approach to how data is stored, managed, protected, and governed over time. That’s why we’re excited to announce an expansion to the CTERA Intelligent Data Platform that brings together our new CTERA InsightAI and CTERA Archive capabilities to deliver an end-to-end approach to data lifecycle management.
Identifying Archiving Candidates with CTERA InsightAI
The first challenge in any archiving initiative is knowing what to archive. CTERA InsightAI addresses this by scanning the environment and surfacing a ranked list of archive candidates, organized by age and usage patterns. Archive Operators can review the output and select what to archive or permanently delete. The identification work that once required manual log reviews across distributed storage is now faster and more accurate.
Efficient Storage Tiering and Cost Reduction with Archive Cloud Drives
Once data for archiving is identified, you can archive it in a systematic and governed way. The core of CTERA Archive is Archive Cloud Drives, which are specialized, immutable cloud folder types built for long-term preservation that administrators set up on lower-cost object storage classes.
Using CTERA Archive to move data to colder online storage significantly reduces the infrastructure cost of retaining large volumes of unused data. Those savings can be up to 83% when moving data from Amazon S3 Standard to Glacier Instant Retrieval, for example.
Additionally, when data is archived, it’s transitioned from primary storage to a secondary storage license tier. This allows organizations to save by freeing up primary storage quotas while keeping archived data searchable and visible through metadata. CTERA Portal global and tenant-level reports now reflect the split between primary and secondary storage usage.
Immutable Data Retention and WORM Compliances
Security and compliance are at the heart of CTERA Archive. Data is protected through two distinct retention modes:
- Enterprise Mode: Allows privileged users to delete content during the retention period when necessary, offering flexibility for internal data management.
- Compliance Mode: Creates a strict WORM (Write Once, Read Many) environment where no deletion is permitted, and retention periods can only be increased, never decreased.
For added end-to-end security, archived data’s retention may be propagated to S3 object storage buckets with Object Lock enabled.
Operational Control and the Archive Manager
Managing sensitive archives requires strict oversight. We have introduced the Archive Operator role, which has dedicated permissions to initiate archive and restore operations. The archive process is a guided workflow that preserves the full original file path and original NT-ACLs. After a successful archive, the source data is removed, either as a soft delete or, with elevated authorization, a permanent delete. Permanent deletion of source data requires two-factor authentication (2FA).
This also removes the data from standard SMB and NFS access, shrinking the attack surface on historical files that would otherwise remain exposed on the network.
Restoring Archived Data When You Need It
When business or legal needs require access to preserved data, “Restore Archive” brings content back into active use. Authorized Archive Managers can restore files and folders to their original location or to an alternative path, with full audit logging and email notification on completion. Restore runs as a background operation, so large recoveries don’t block day-to-day work.
Read-Only Archive Access on CTERA Edge Filers
While archived data cannot be downloaded or modified, it remains accessible for reference. On CTERA Edge Filers, archived data appears strictly as “read-only”; any attempt to open, modify or delete these files returns an “Access Denied” error. In the CTERA Portal, archived items support thumbnails and file previews to aid identification before a restore is initiated.
Archive Cloud Folders can also be configured for full isolation, preventing online access not just for end users but for AI and analytics systems as well. This gives orgnazations explicit control over whether historical or sensitive data is included in AI training sets or inference workloads, keeping the active data estate clean for AI deployments.
Enterprise-Grade Archiving at Scale
CTERA Archive is built for enterprise-grade performance and scale. Looking ahead, we are developing ways to make the archiving process more automated by harnessing additional capabilities in CTERA InsightAI. These new features will include Data Flows for automated, policy-driven archiving. This may include automatically moving data to a vault after a defined retention period, deleting old stale data, and other Data Flows.
Together, CTERA InsightAI and CTERA Archive give organizations the visibility to know what data should move, and the governed workflow to move it. By integrating the CTERA Archiving solution and restoration process directly into the Global File System, CTERA provides a unified path for data throughout its entire lifecycle: from active creation to long-term preservation and controlled recovery.
