What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows
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@BBigford said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
What are your clients using to transfer files or make them accessible externally?
Normally tools like OneDrive for Business.
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@scottalanmiller said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@BBigford said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
What are your clients using to transfer files or make them accessible externally?
Normally tools like OneDrive for Business.
What if users external to the company needs read access to quickly changing data that adds up to 1.5 TB, that can't be sync'd to OneDrive or such methods? If the data is located on a Windows Server, you can spin up a Linux VM, and use "mount" to mount the CIFS windows share, and then use the built in FTP or SFTP in Linux to point to the mount point.
Would that be a viable solution? Or did I pull that one out too quick and miss some things?
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@Tim_G said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@BBigford said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
What are your clients using to transfer files or make them accessible externally?
Normally tools like OneDrive for Business.
What if users external to the company needs read access to quickly changing data that adds up to 1.5 TB, that can't be sync'd to OneDrive or such methods? If the data is located on a Windows Server, you can spin up a Linux VM, and use "mount" to mount the CIFS windows share, and then use the built in FTP or SFTP in Linux to point to the mount point.
Would that be a viable solution? Or did I pull that one out too quick and miss some things?
The complexity of that is higher than just logging into a VPN and having a drive already mounted in Explorer via GPO (not available offline).
If it's a one time thing, connect to the VPN and mount the drive, opting out of Reconnecting.
If users aren't using a VPN, they really should be.
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@Tim_G said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@BBigford said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
What are your clients using to transfer files or make them accessible externally?
Normally tools like OneDrive for Business.
What if users external to the company needs read access to quickly changing data that adds up to 1.5 TB, that can't be sync'd to OneDrive or such methods? If the data is located on a Windows Server, you can spin up a Linux VM, and use "mount" to mount the CIFS windows share, and then use the built in FTP or SFTP in Linux to point to the mount point.
Would that be a viable solution? Or did I pull that one out too quick and miss some things?
Yup, that's pretty viable. If you have a unique case and really need something "like FTP", then SFTP on Linux is a great solution. It's very simple, very secure, very well known.
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@Tim_G said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@BBigford said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
What are your clients using to transfer files or make them accessible externally?
Normally tools like OneDrive for Business.
What if users external to the company needs read access to quickly changing data that adds up to 1.5 TB, that can't be sync'd to OneDrive or such methods? If the data is located on a Windows Server, you can spin up a Linux VM, and use "mount" to mount the CIFS windows share, and then use the built in FTP or SFTP in Linux to point to the mount point.
Would that be a viable solution? Or did I pull that one out too quick and miss some things?
There are very unique cases where direct SFTP to Windows would be better than a Linux VM, but it's rare. Very rare. In theory we can come up with scenarios, but in the real world I see it far less often than we would theorize. There are normally better ways to handle it, but different for every scenario.
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@scottalanmiller said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@BBigford said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
What are your clients using to transfer files or make them accessible externally?
Normally tools like OneDrive for Business.
can you give a client access to upload a file to your ODfB?
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@Tim_G said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@BBigford said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
What are your clients using to transfer files or make them accessible externally?
Normally tools like OneDrive for Business.
What if users external to the company needs read access to quickly changing data that adds up to 1.5 TB, that can't be sync'd to OneDrive or such methods? If the data is located on a Windows Server, you can spin up a Linux VM, and use "mount" to mount the CIFS windows share, and then use the built in FTP or SFTP in Linux to point to the mount point.
Would that be a viable solution? Or did I pull that one out too quick and miss some things?
wow 1.5 TB - how are they getting that data? are the downloading this regularly changing data as fast as it changes? you must have one hell of an upload pipe, they must have one hell of a download pipe.
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@Dashrender said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@BBigford said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
What are your clients using to transfer files or make them accessible externally?
Normally tools like OneDrive for Business.
can you give a client access to upload a file to your ODfB?
For this specific use case we've used ownCloud in the past.
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@scottalanmiller said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@Dashrender said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@BBigford said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
What are your clients using to transfer files or make them accessible externally?
Normally tools like OneDrive for Business.
can you give a client access to upload a file to your ODfB?
For this specific use case we've used ownCloud in the past.
That's what I use Nextcloud for these days.
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I'm installing the OpenSSH-Win32 SFTP server and it leaves a lot to be desired. To be fair SFTP leaves a lot to be desired but still this is not a great implementation.
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@coliver said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
I'm installing the OpenSSH-Win32 SFTP server and it leaves a lot to be desired. To be fair SFTP leaves a lot to be desired but still this is not a great implementation.
What do you want from SFTP that it does not provide?
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@scottalanmiller said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@coliver said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
I'm installing the OpenSSH-Win32 SFTP server and it leaves a lot to be desired. To be fair SFTP leaves a lot to be desired but still this is not a great implementation.
What do you want from SFTP that it does not provide?
Configurable home directories is the biggest one. This may be a function of the operating system (don't ask) but that can be configured with a *nix box.
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@coliver said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@coliver said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
I'm installing the OpenSSH-Win32 SFTP server and it leaves a lot to be desired. To be fair SFTP leaves a lot to be desired but still this is not a great implementation.
What do you want from SFTP that it does not provide?
Configurable home directories is the biggest one. This may be a function of the operating system (don't ask) but that can be configured with a *nix box.
SFTP is just a protocol. What protocol doesn't lack the ability to configure home directories?
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@scottalanmiller said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@coliver said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@coliver said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
I'm installing the OpenSSH-Win32 SFTP server and it leaves a lot to be desired. To be fair SFTP leaves a lot to be desired but still this is not a great implementation.
What do you want from SFTP that it does not provide?
Configurable home directories is the biggest one. This may be a function of the operating system (don't ask) but that can be configured with a *nix box.
SFTP is just a protocol. What protocol doesn't lack the ability to configure home directories?
That's fine, I was thinking of the software itself. Hence the mentioning of the SFTP server included in this package. Comparing it to other SFTP servers on other platforms it doesn't do as much as I expected.
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@coliver said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@coliver said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
@coliver said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
I'm installing the OpenSSH-Win32 SFTP server and it leaves a lot to be desired. To be fair SFTP leaves a lot to be desired but still this is not a great implementation.
What do you want from SFTP that it does not provide?
Configurable home directories is the biggest one. This may be a function of the operating system (don't ask) but that can be configured with a *nix box.
SFTP is just a protocol. What protocol doesn't lack the ability to configure home directories?
That's fine, I was thinking of the software itself. Hence the mentioning of the SFTP server included in this package. Comparing it to other SFTP servers on other platforms it doesn't do as much as I expected.
I haven't tested it that thoroughly, but what is different? It's literally the same SFTP as is on all other platforms, it's the reference implementation, just ported. AFAIK, it's identical.
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I was trying to understand what features might be missing as well? to be SFTP, doesn't it have to follow the RFCs regardless of platform?
Perhaps you mean it doesn't have a good logging interface like another system might? or something along those lines, more an admin desire, less a function of the SFTP protocol.
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@Dashrender said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
I was trying to understand what features might be missing as well? to be SFTP, doesn't it have to follow the RFCs regardless of platform?
Correct. Should be identical at the SFTP level. Especially as it's not just SFTP, but the same SFTP.
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@bobbb127
No, shame on you.
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@bobbb127 said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
This is an old thread, but I wanted to chime in here and suggest Titan FTP Server since it's somewhat unclear if the OP actually chose something. Titan supports SFTP (and many other protocols) and is affordable and stable. Been using it for years now without any problem
How would something like that justify being one penny more than "free"? As a third party product trying to reproduce functionality that is both native to the OS and open source, it would need to pay me (literally) to be "affordable" in the context. Even at free, it would be pretty impossible to consider it a "good value."
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@bobbb127 said in What is the Best SFTP Server for Windows:
... since it's somewhat unclear if the OP actually chose something.
This was the quote: "None, use Linux where SFTP is native and built in and configured for you right out of the box, ready to go, for free. This is a silly question. People need to stop asking it." Seems pretty clear what was chosen.
Now, in the time since then, OpenSSH (the same one used on Linux) has been integrated into Windows. So things have changed. Windows, if you already have it, running OpenSSH is just fine. Two years ago, it was not.
