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Managed File Transfers
Ossi Galkin avatar
Written by Ossi Galkin
Updated over 2 months ago

As Frends has been around for over 30 years our MFT capabilities are among the best in the market and are based on our previous independant product Cobalt, which enables all file transfer scenarios in both legacy and modern scenarios.

Managed File Transfer scenarios are implemented in Frends by utilizing the Cobalt Transfer task as a part of any standard integration process:

Frends Managed File Transfer Process Example

and then configuring the Cobalt Transfer task according to the file transfer use case in question:

Frends Managed File Tansfer Configuration Example

Supported Protocols

Frends has out-of-the-box support for the following file transfer protocols:

FTP

  • Username and Password authentication

FTPS

  • Username and Password authentication

SFTP

  • Username and Password authentication

  • Username and Private Key authentication

  • Username, Password and Private Key authentication

  • Supported host key algorithms: RSA | DSS | Certificate | ED25519 | ECDsaNistP256 | ECDsaNistP384 | ECDsaNistP521

Windows and Linux based file systems

  • OS User based authentication via Kerberos

File Transfer Features

Additionally the Cobalt Transfer task offers a multitude of useful features regarding to managed file transfers such as:

  • Automatic file backups and backup cleanups

  • Renaming of files before, during and after the transfer

  • Various logical options on how to deal with existing or locked files

File Transfer Process

The file transfer process goes through the following steps to perform the file transfer:

Initialize Initializes the transfer and opens the source connection.

List Files Navigates to the correct directory and lists all the files that match the given filemask.

Transfer Files If there are files to transfer, they are then transferred individually. The following steps are applied for each file:

  1. Rename or move the file to be transferred according to settings

  2. Retrieve or transmit the file depending on the use case

  3. Delete, rename or move the original transferred file

  4. Apply additional steps such as backups etc.

  5. Finished

Managed File Transfer Monitoring

When executing managed file transfers as part of integrations frends automatically keeps fine grained logs of all operations relating to the managed file transfer in question, which can be viewed from the integration process instance in question.

Frends Failed Managed File Transfer Example

Example of the failed transfer log:

08:30:45Z: Connecting to speedtest.tele2.net:21 using Ftp. 08:30:45Z: Assembly: Rebex.Ftp 2017 R3 for .NET 4.0-4.7 08:30:45Z: Platform: Windows 6.2.9200 64-bit; CLR: 4.0.30319.42000 08:30:45Z: Culture: en; Windows-1252 08:30:45Z: Using proxy none. 08:30:48Z: 220 (vsFTPd 3.0.3) 08:30:48Z: USER anonymous 08:30:48Z: 331 Please specify the password. 08:30:48Z: PASS ********* 08:30:53Z: 230 Login successful. 08:30:53Z: FEAT 08:30:53Z: 211-Features: 08:30:53Z: EPRT 08:30:53Z: EPSV 08:30:53Z: MDTM 08:30:53Z: PASV 08:30:53Z: REST STREAM 08:30:53Z: SIZE 08:30:53Z: TVFS 08:30:53Z: 211 End 08:30:53Z: CWD / 08:30:53Z: 250 Directory successfully changed. 08:30:53Z: TYPE A 08:30:53Z: 200 Switching to ASCII mode. 08:30:53Z: PASV 08:30:53Z: 227 Entering Passive Mode (90,130,70,73,112,16). 08:30:53Z: LIST 08:30:53Z: 150 Here comes the directory listing. 08:30:53Z: 226 Directory send OK. 08:30:53Z: Connecting to speedtest.tele2.net:21 using Ftp. 08:30:53Z: Assembly: Rebex.Ftp 2017 R3 for .NET 4.0-4.7 08:30:53Z: Platform: Windows 6.2.9200 64-bit; CLR: 4.0.30319.42000 08:30:53Z: Culture: en; Windows-1252 08:30:53Z: Using proxy none. 08:31:03Z: 220 (vsFTPd 3.0.3) 08:31:03Z: USER anonymous 08:31:03Z: 331 Please specify the password. 08:31:03Z: PASS ********* 08:31:15Z: 230 Login successful. 08:31:15Z: FEAT 08:31:15Z: 211-Features: 08:31:15Z: EPRT 08:31:15Z: EPSV 08:31:15Z: MDTM 08:31:15Z: PASV 08:31:15Z: REST STREAM 08:31:15Z: SIZE 08:31:15Z: TVFS 08:31:15Z: 211 End 08:31:15Z: CWD speedtest.tele2.net 08:31:15Z: 550 Failed to change directory. Frends file transfer from 'Ftp://speedtest.tele2.net///2MB.zip' to 'Ftp://speedtest.tele2.net/speedtest.tele2.net/20200520_file_01.zip' failed with an error code: 550 Failed to change directory
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