Send and retrieve files by using an SFTP connector
SFTP connectors extend the capabilities of AWS Transfer Family to communicate with remote servers both in the cloud and on-premises. You can integrate data that's generated and stored in remote sources with your AWS hosted data warehouses for analytics, business applications, reporting, and auditing.
To initiate a file transfer to a remote SFTP
server, you use the StartFileTransfer API operation, which uses SFTP
connectors to perform the transfer. Each StartFileTransfer
request can
contain 10 distinct paths.
You can monitor your file transfers by checking your server logs. Connector activity
is logged to log streams that have the format of
aws/transfer/
, for example,
connector-id
aws/transfer/c-1234567890abcdef0
. If you don't see any logs for your
connector, make sure that you have specified a logging role with the correct permissions
for your connector.
For details on creating connectors, see Configure SFTP connectors.
To send and retrieve files by using an SFTP connector, you use the
start-file-transfer
AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) command. You specify the
following parameters, depending on whether you're sending files (outbound transfers)
or receiving files (inbound transfers).
-
Outbound transfers
-
send-file-paths
contains from one to ten source file paths, for files to transfer to the partner's SFTP server. -
remote-directory-path
is the remote path to send a file to on the customer's SFTP server.
-
-
Inbound transfers
-
retrieve-file-paths
contains from one to ten remote paths. Each path specifies a location for transferring files from the partner's SFTP server to your Transfer Family server. -
local-directory-path
is the Amazon S3 location (bucket and optional prefix) where your files are stored.
-
To send files, you specify the send-file-paths
and
remote-directory-path
parameters. You can specify up to 10 files for the
send-file-paths
parameter. The following example command sends the files
named /DOC-EXAMPLE-SOURCE-BUCKET/file1.txt
and /DOC-EXAMPLE-SOURCE-BUCKET/file2.txt
, located in Amazon S3 storage, to
the /tmp
directory on your partner's SFTP server. To use this example
command, replace the
with
your own bucket.DOC-EXAMPLE-SOURCE-BUCKET
aws transfer start-file-transfer --send-file-paths /DOC-EXAMPLE-SOURCE-BUCKET/file1.txt /DOC-EXAMPLE-SOURCE-BUCKET/file2.txt \ --remote-directory-path /tmp --connector-id c-
1111AAAA2222BBBB3
--regionus-east-2
To receive files, you specify the retrieve-file-paths
and
local-directory-path
parameters. The following example retrieves
the files /my/remote/file1.txt
and
/my/remote/file2.txt
on the
partner's SFTP server, and places it in the Amazon S3 location
/DOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET/prefix
. To use this example
command, replace the
with your own information.user input placeholders
aws transfer start-file-transfer --retrieve-file-paths /my/remote/file1.txt /my/remote/file2.txt \ --local-directory-path /
DOC-EXAMPLE-BUCKET/prefix
--connector-id c-2222BBBB3333CCCC4
--regionus-east-2
The previous examples specify absolute paths on the SFTP server. You can also use
relative paths: that is, paths that are relative to the SFTP user's home directory.
For example, if the SFTP user is marymajor
and their home
directory on the SFTP server is /users/marymajor/
, the
following command sends /DOC-EXAMPLE-SOURCE-BUCKET/file1.txt
to /users/marymajor/test-connectors/file1.txt
aws transfer start-file-transfer --send-file-paths /DOC-EXAMPLE-SOURCE-BUCKET/file1.txt \ --remote-directory-path test-connectors --connector-id c-
2222BBBB3333CCCC4
--regionus-east-2