SFTP Gateway Support

3.0

Deploy a v3 server

Overview

This article discusses how to deploy SFTP Gateway version 3. There are different plans and deployment methods to choose from. For example:

  • SFTP Gateway Standard versus SFTP Gateway Professional
  • Single instance versus HA
  • Deploy using the Azure Portal versus ARM versus Terraform

This article will help you navigate these different options, so you can determine which approach is right for you.

Standard vs Professional plans

In SFTP Gateway v3.6.0, you have two plans to choose from:

SFTP Gateway Standard is an affordable option that is best suited for small workloads with fewer than 5 SFTP users. For example, you can use this for a dev or demo environment. Support is limited to our free email-only tier.

SFTP Gateway Professional is the best option for most production workloads. It supports up to 100 SFTP users. You have the option to deploy this as a single instance or HA. And it comes with Advanced Support, so you have a lifeline to help troubleshoot issues in case production goes down.

See our documentation for more information about our plans and pricing.

Picking a VM size

The SFTP Gateway software is charged separately from the underlying VM. So choosing the correct VM size is part of the cost optimization process.

See our documentation for picking a VM size that is right for you.

Single instance or High Availability

SFTP Gateway can be deployed either as a single VM, or in high availability (HA).

A single instance is less expensive and is easier to maintain.

An HA deployment can handle larger workloads because SFTP traffic is spread out across multiple VMs. Also, your production environment remains operational even if there is a failure with one of the VM nodes.

HA (which is only available with SFTP Gateway Professional), is recommended for heavier production workloads, or whenever the SFTP service is a critical dependency for your business.

How do I deploy SFTP Gateway

There are different ways to deploy SFTP Gateway, and each approach is ideal for certain scenarios.

Deploy directly from the Azure marketplace

From the Azure marketplace, you can click Get it Now and go through the Virtual Machine deployment wizard:

This is the easiest and most common way of deploying SFTP Gateway. See our documentation on how to deploy SFTP Gateway from the Azure Marketplace.

Note: You can only deploy SFTP Gateway as a single VM using this approach.

Deploy using ARM

You can deploy SFTP Gateway programmatically using an ARM template. With this approach, you can deploy the SFTP Gateway VM and related resources in a controlled and repeatable way.

We have ARM templates for both single and HA deployments:

Deploy using Terraform

Many organizations use Terraform as their infrastructure as code templating language (as an alternative to ARM).

Currently, we have a Terraform template for single instance deployments:

We are working on an HA Terraform template that will be available soon.

Example use cases

Below are some generic examples of typical customer scenarios, and how they would deploy SFTP Gateway.

SFTP Gateway Standard on a Single VM

Customer only has a single SFTP user that only sends files occasionally. The company is a sole proprietorship, and cost optimization is the highest concern.

The customer deploys SFTP Gateway Standard on a Standard_B1ms VM, which is the most affordable configuration.

SFTP Gateway Professional on a Single VM

Customer has roughly 20 SFTP users, which exceeds the user cap for Standard. The customer also doesn't have Linux admins on staff, and prefers to hop on a screen share for troubleshooting because this is the fastest to resolve issues.

The customer deploys SFTP Gateway Professional on a Standard_D2s_v3, a production-grade VM size. He also requests help with deployment and setup via screen share, because this is included in the Professional tier.

SFTP Gateway Professional in HA

Customer has 40 SFTP users, but these clients send large amounts of data. It's also critical that this data is ingested in a timely manner because of the high profile nature of the business.

The customer deploys SFTP Gateway Professional in HA. Larger D-class VMs are chosen based on performance tuning, and sometimes the scale set is expanded to more than 2 VMs to handle traffic spikes. When issues arise, the customer takes advantage of screen sharing sessions to troubleshoot critical issues.

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