13.16.1. Introduction¶

The SFTPPlus software stands at the OSI Layer 7 or the TCP Layer 4 (application). In order to have a fully fault tolerant system, you need to implement resilience at all the other layers including the OS. SFTPPlus can be integrated with external tools in order to meet the requirements for a fault tolerant infrastructure.

13.16.2. Active-Passive Scenario¶

In this infrastructure scenario, the second system is offline and only commences when the main SFTPPlus system is down.

Since the server.ini configuration is stored in a single file, you can create a file copy task to keep the system configurations in sync. Make sure to also transfer additional files that are required - such as SSH keys, and SSL keys and certificates - to ensure a smooth transition. When it is time to use the secondary system, the SFTPPlus instance will then read the latest server.ini configuration file.

13.16.3. Active-Active Scenario¶

In this infrastructure scenario, both SFTPPlus systems are receiving and processing requests. If one system goes down, the other will handle all the requests.

To implement SFTPPlus in this scenario, a simple file copy will not work. This is because running SFTPPlus instances will not check changes in the local file configuration (server.ini) in order to reconfigure. In addition, there are other files that are also required - such as all SSH keys in use and other related files, all SSL certificates required, any logs that need to be kept for auditing purposes, any externally referenced scripts used in pre- and post- transfer processing, and so on.

One method of achieving an active/active implementation is to manually set up the 2 nodes to rely on a single external authentication method (HTTP, LDAP, or external file). In this way, accounts are managed in the single external system, and those accounts will be automatically available for both SFTPPlus instances.

Another method, is to have multiple instances sharing the same configuration folder. Each SFTPPlus instance will be executed on a separate VM, but they will have the same configuration files. Note that in this case you should make sure that you use the Web Manager of only one instance to make configuration changes. Once configuration changes were done, the other instances need to be manually restarted. Each SFTPPlus instance needs to have its own log file. To ensure that each instance has its own log file, make sure that each instance has an unique name and then set up the log file path using the {host.name} variable. In this case, the local file event handler might look like the following example:

[event-handlers/b904ed23-a234-4ccf-8abd-edcae4d3324f]
enabled = yes
name = Log File
type = local-file
path = /var/logs/sftpplus-{host.name}.log