Azure file share bitvise SFTP

Question

I am trying to create an SFTP server which can serve files to different VM's depending on which user the files were SFTP too.

We have previously used bitvise to create "Virtual Accounts" and limiting the root directory to the location we want that users files to go to. This involved installing bitvise on every server we own.

We are trying to move away from this to a dedicated SFTP VM which can then serve its files to the relevant machine. See the image below:

Example

As an example. Someone SFTP's a document to User Credentials "User 1" these documents would be accesible/transferred to VM 1 and if someone SFTP's a document to User Credentials "User 2" these documents would be accesible/transferred to VM 2

I have tried using azure's "File Share" to create a network drive however this seems to cause permissions errors when accessing the folder via SFTP

Answer 1

When using Azure file share, whatever user that mounts the drive will be what user that has access to. In this case it will be the bitvise Virtual user. your best bet is to set up Active directory and have bitvise use the ad credentials of the user. this will keep user permissions intact. Otherwise your only real alternative is to have virtual mount points for the users. or you can create specific folders in the mounted shared drive and make user users are mapped to their directory.

Azure file share is meant primarily as an NFS mount path that can be mounted by other machines for distributed file access.

Answer 2

It sounds like the product, CompleteFTP, of which I'm a key developer could handle that requirement very easily. CompleteFTP has an extremely flexible virtual file-system (VFS) in which you can mount directories from different file-systems seamlessly. There are many different possibilities. You could, for example:

1. mount the UNC path of a shared directory in the VFS. That would require SMB access between the VMs of course.

2. install the free edition of CompleteFTP (which supports only FTP and FTPS) on each of the VMs, giving access only to your SFTP server, and then use the gateway folder feature of CompleteFTP to mount the VM's FTP folders within the SFTP server's VFS. That way, when a user changes into the gateway folders, they're actually accessing the VM's file-system without any external indication that that's what's happening. Gateway folders are available in the Enterprise Edition.

3. If your requirements are very specific then CompleteFTP offers custom file-system adapters (.NET or Javascript). These allow you to develop your own virtual file-systems of virtually unlimited complexity.