Windows Azure and SFTP

Question

I know very little about Azure, but I am looking for a cloud server where I can have clients SFTP their files to us. It will be used primarily for data storage. The only requirement is that the files be sent over SFTP (not FTP).

Does anyone have any experience with this? How difficult is this to setup? Is this even possible?

Solution 1

You can find step by step instructions on how to set up a regular FTP site on Windows Azure VM here - http://nicoploner.blogspot.com/2010/12/ftp-server-on-windows-azure-from.html

Here's how to set up SFTP on Windows Server (applies to Azure VM as well) - http://www.digitalmediaminute.com/article/1487/setting-up-a-sftp-server-on-windows

Solution 2

Yes you can set up an Azure VM Role and then install a SFTP Server for a Windows Server.

You can also set up a Linux VM Role and just use the native sftp command.

Depending on what you are doing, you may want to use a RESTful service that points back to blob storage (this is not SFTP), but it does go over HTTPs and you have all the benefits of Azure Blob Storage directly.

Solution 3

Here are a couple of options and additional resources:

1) You can install SFTP on Windows Server

https://winscp.net/eng/docs/guide_windows_openssh_server

This uses an OpenSSH package on GitHub from Microsoft.

2) You can use an Ubuntu VM

As @Bart Czernicki mentioned, OpenSSH is built into Linux, and it comes with SFTP out of the box. Customize your implementation using the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file.

3) SFTP Gateway

We have a product on the Azure Marketplace called SFTP Gateway that might help. (Disclosure: I work for Thorn Technologies.)

This is a good option for launching an SFTP server without having to build it from scratch. It also has a web interface for managing users, to help minimize the time spent at the SSH terminal.

BTW, although this wasn't asked in the original question, you might want to consider moving data to a durable storage layer (Azure Blob Storage). One approach would be to use incron to listen for file events. Once a file is done transferring via SFTP, use the Azure CLI to copy the file to Azure Blob Storage, and then delete the file from disk on success. This is the approach we used to build SFTP Gateway.

Hope this helps!