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Transfer Family

Priority Tier 4 Domain 2: Design Resilient Architectures

AWS Transfer Family is a fully managed, highly available, serverless service for business-to-business (B2B) file transfer. It eliminates the pain of managing traditional file transfer infrastructure, acting as a bridge for partners to deposit files directly into AWS storage using standard protocols, while also meeting compliance requirements. (source_page: 6)

Learning Objectives

Core Functionality and Benefits

AWS Transfer Family simplifies secure file transfer for B2B workflows by providing a managed and scalable service.

Eliminates the pain of managing traditional file transfer infrastructure (e.g., SFTP servers on EC2 instances), including provisioning, patching, scaling, and security.
A fully managed, highly available, serverless service for business-to-business (B2B) file transfer.
Acts as a bridge for partners using standard file protocols, allowing them to deposit files directly into AWS storage.
Integrates automatically with Amazon S3 and Amazon EFS.
Supports SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol), FTPS (FTP over SSL/TLS), and FTP (File Transfer Protocol).
Technical Specs: SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol): Built on SSH, the most common and secure choice. FTPS (FTP over SSL/TLS): FTP with encryption. FTP (File Transfer Protocol): Unencrypted, generally not recommended for sensitive data.
The service handles underlying server infrastructure management.
Provides a secure and managed service that meets compliance requirements (e.g., HIPAA, PCI DSS). It offers encryption at rest (AWS KMS) and in transit (SSL/TLS), automatic integration with S3 and EFS, and high availability with automatic scaling.

Architecture and Security

AWS Transfer Family provides a robust serverless architecture with flexible authentication mechanisms and comprehensive logging.

Provides a highly available endpoint that supports configured file transfer protocols.
Internally translates standard file transfer protocol commands into S3 API calls or EFS operations.
Offers flexible authentication supporting existing IAM roles, integration with Active Directory or LDAP, custom identity providers via API Gateway, username and SSH key (for SFTP), and username and password. Lambda integration can use Amazon Cognito as an authenticator provider or integrate with Active Directory.
Can be exposed securely via a VPC endpoint, enclosed by a security group, and potentially exposed through an Elastic Network Interface (ENI). This configuration ensures secure access without exposing the data to the public internet.
Can be integrated with API Gateway and Lambda functions for customized authentication logic.
Provides full visibility and logging capabilities via CloudWatch and CloudTrail.
Underpinned by a robust serverless architecture.

Use Cases

AWS Transfer Family is suited for various scenarios requiring secure and managed file transfers, particularly for B2B interactions.

The primary use case, facilitating secure file transfers with trading partners.
Acts as a simple, secure mechanism for getting data (e.g., JSON) into S3 for processing by services like AWS Glue or Lambda. For example, justice and public safety departments can receive criminal or arrest files from other organizations into an S3 data lake.
Allows migration of legacy file transfer workflows to the cloud without requiring partners to change their client software, thereby minimizing disruption.

Exam Tips

Glossary

SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol)
Built on SSH, the most common and secure choice for file transfer.
FTPS (FTP over SSL/TLS)
FTP with encryption provided by SSL/TLS.
FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
An unencrypted file transfer protocol, generally not recommended for sensitive data.

Key Takeaways

Content Sources

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