What is AWS Transfer Family?
AWS Transfer Family is a secure transfer service that enables you to transfer files into and out of
AWS storage services. Transfer Family is part of the AWS Cloud platform. AWS Transfer Family offers fully
managed support for the transfer of files over SFTP, AS2, FTPS, FTP, and web browser-based
transfers directly into and out of AWS storage services. You can seamlessly migrate,
automate, and monitor your file transfer workflows by maintaining existing client-side
configurations for authentication, access, and firewalls—so nothing changes for your
customers, partners, and internal teams, or their applications. See Getting started with AWS
AWS Transfer Family supports transferring data from or to the following AWS storage services.
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Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) storage. For information about Amazon S3, see Getting started with Amazon Simple Storage Service.
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Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) Network File System (NFS) file systems. For information about Amazon EFS, see What is Amazon Elastic File System?
AWS Transfer Family supports transferring data over the following protocols:
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Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP): version 3
The official IETF document is here: SSH File Transfer Protocol draft-ietf-secsh-filexfer-02.txt
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File Transfer Protocol Secure (FTPS)
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File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
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Applicability Statement 2 (AS2)
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Browser-based transfers
Note
For FTP and FTPS data connections, the port range that Transfer Family uses to establish the data channel is 8192–8200.
File transfer protocols are used in data exchange workflows across different industries such as financial services, healthcare, advertising, and retail, among others. Transfer Family simplifies the migration of file transfer workflows to AWS.
The following are some common use cases for using Transfer Family with Amazon S3:
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Data lakes in AWS for uploads from third parties such as vendors and partners.
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Subscription-based data distribution with your customers.
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Internal transfers within your organization.
The following are some common use cases for using Transfer Family with Amazon EFS:
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Data distribution
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Supply chain
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Content management
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Web serving applications
The following are some common use cases for using Transfer Family with AS2:
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Workflows with compliance requirements that rely on having data protection and security features built into the protocol
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Supply chain logistics
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Payments workflows
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Business-to-business (B2B) transactions
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Integrations with enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems
The following are some common use cases for using Transfer Family web apps:
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Simplified access to data in Amazon S3 to a wider and diverse range of business users
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Centralized data access management for your workforce
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Visualization of Amazon S3 Access Grants through a managed interface
With Transfer Family, you get access to a file transfer protocol-enabled server in AWS (or a managed file transfer web interface), without the need to run any server infrastructure. You can use this service to migrate your file transfer-based workflows to AWS while maintaining your end users' clients and configurations as is. For servers, you first associate your hostname with the server endpoint, then add your users and provision them with the right level of access. After you do this, your users' transfer requests are serviced directly out of your Transfer Family server endpoint.
For Transfer Family web apps, determine your configuration settings and apply optional customizations. After you do this, your users can log in and directly transfer data to and from Amazon S3.
Transfer Family provides the following benefits:
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A fully managed service that scales in real time to meet your needs.
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You don't need to modify your applications or run any file transfer protocol infrastructure.
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With your data in durable Amazon S3 storage, you can use native AWS services for processing, analytics, reporting, auditing, and archival functions.
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With Amazon EFS as your data store, you get a fully managed elastic file system for use with AWS Cloud services and on-premises resources. Amazon EFS is built to scale on demand to petabytes without disrupting applications, growing and shrinking automatically as you add and remove files. This helps eliminate the need to provision and manage capacity to accommodate growth.
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A fully managed, serverless File Transfer Workflow service that makes it easy to set up, run, automate, and monitor processing of files uploaded using AWS Transfer Family.
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There are no upfront costs, and you pay only for the use of the service.
In the following sections, you can find a description of the different features of Transfer Family, a getting started tutorial, detailed instructions on how to set up the different protocol enabled servers, how to use different types of identity providers, and the service's API reference.
To get started with Transfer Family, see the following:
How AWS Transfer Family works
AWS Transfer Family is a fully managed AWS service that you can use to transfer files into and out of Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) storage or Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS) file systems over the following protocols or web browser:
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Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP): version 3
The official IETF document is here: SSH File Transfer Protocol draft-ietf-secsh-filexfer-02.txt
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File Transfer Protocol Secure (FTPS)
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File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
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Applicability Statement 2 (AS2)
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Browser-based transfers
AWS Transfer Family supports up to 3 Availability Zones and is backed by an auto scaling, redundant
fleet for your connection and transfer requests. For an example on how to build for higher
redundancy and minimize network latency by using Latency-based routing, see the blog post
Minimize
network latency with your AWS transfer for SFTP servers
Transfer Family Managed File Transfer Workflows (MFTW) is a fully managed, serverless File Transfer Workflow service that makes it easy to set up, run, automate, and monitor processing of files uploaded using AWS Transfer Family. Customers can use MFTW to automate various processing steps such as copying, tagging, scanning, filtering, compressing/decompressing, and encrypting/decrypting the data that's transferred using Transfer Family. This provides end to end visibility for tracking and auditability. For more details, see AWS Transfer Family managed workflows.
AWS Transfer Family supports any standard file transfer protocol client. Some commonly used clients are the following:
AWS offers the following Transfer Family workshops.
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Build a file transfer solution that leverages AWS Transfer Family for managed SFTP/FTPS endpoints and Amazon Cognito and DynamoDB for user management. You can view the details for this workshop here
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Build a Transfer Family endpoint with AS2 enabled, and a Transfer Family AS2 connector You can view the details for this workshop here
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Build a solution that provides prescriptive guidance and a hands on lab on how you can build a scalable and secure file transfer architecture on AWS without needing to modify existing applications or manage server infrastructure. You can view the details for this workshop here
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Blog posts relevant for Transfer Family
The following table lists the blog posts that contain useful information for Transfer Family customers. The table is in reverse chronological order, so that the most recent posts are at the beginning of the table.
