When configuring jobs in FlowForce Server, you may need to connect to an FTP server. For example, your job may need to retrieve files from the remote FTP server, list the contents of a directory on the FTP server, or delete files via FTP. To enable operations such as the one above, FlowForce Server provides support for connecting to FTP Servers using any of the following protocols: FTP, FTPS, SFTP. Information about these protocols is provided in the list below:
•The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) enables you to transfer files between FlowForce Server and the remote FTP server. This protocol is assigned the TCP port 21. The FTP protocol was not designed to be a secure mode for transferring files. If you would like to transfer data securely, use either FTPS or SFTP, as described below.
•An alternative to using plain FTP is the FTP Secure (FTPS) protocol, which refers to FTP over a secured TLS/SSL channel. FlowForce Server supports this usage of FTP according to RFC 4217 (also known as FTP with TLS/SSL explicit encryption). To establish a connection via FTP or FTPS, use functions available in the built-in /system/ftp container.
•FTP with TLS/SSL implicit encryption is considered deprecated and thus not supported.
•Secure FTP (SFTP) is a method of transferring data securely over Secure Shell (SSH). FTP over SSH works in a significantly different way compared to plain FTP.
•SFTP support is available only in FlowForce Server Advanced Edition.
