Implementation Overview for the FTP Agent

There are different components required to integrate your Automation Engine and FTP servers so that you can trigger and monitor FTP jobs from your Automic Automation system.

These are the steps you have to follow for the integration:

Download the FTP Agent Installation Package

You can download the relevant Agent installation package from our download center at https://docs.automic.com/documentation or from our marketplace at https://marketplace.automic.com/.

For more information, see Downloads and Marketplace.

Install the FTP Agent

After downloading the relevant installation package, you have to install the Agent so that you can establish the communication between the two systems.

Important!

Before installing the Agent, check the version compatibility information at compatibility matrix. For information about how to use the compatibility matrix, see Compatibility Information.

You have different options to install an Agent either using the Automic Web Interface or not:

  • Install the Agent manually or in a container without using the Automic Web Interface.

    The containerized Agent installation refers to building and running a Docker image hosting Java Agents in a container.

  • Install the Agent using the Automic Web Interface.

    In this case, you create and configure an Agent (HOST) object in the Process Assembly perspective of Client 0.

    If the Agent has already been installed in Client 0 in your system, you can also download a pre-configured Agent directly from the Administration perspective in any client in the system.

    Prerequisite: To download an Agent from the Administration perspective, you have to download the relevant Pack from our Marketplace and install it in Client 0. The Packs are the same that are required for a Centralized Agent Upgrade (CAU). You can download the relevant ones from the Packs page in the Administration perspective.

Regardless of how you install the Agents, you can use them in on-premises Automic Automation systems as well as in an Automic Automation Kubernetes Edition system.

For more information about Agents and Packs see the Automic Automation documentation:

For more information on how to install the Agent for Google Cloud Composer see Installing the Google Cloud Composer Agent.

 

Define the FTP Agent

Once you have installed the Agent, you have to configure its INI file to cover your system's requirements, for example, the connection between the Agent and the Automation Engine instance. Then, you define the Agent object in AWI. There are definition pages that are common to all Agents and some that are Agent-specific.

The Agent definition allows you to configure the communication between the Automation Engine and the hosts where you want to issue the commands that you specify in Automic Automation FTP Jobs. The Agent starts the execution of these Jobs and makes both their monitoring and the corresponding reporting possible.

For more information, see Defining the FTP Agent.

Establish the Connection between the Automation Engine and the FTP Agent

Now you have to define the log in data required to establish the connection the hosts. To do so, you have to create and define Connection objects. Once defined, you can select the Connection objects as one of the following:

  • Source host you are transferring files from

  • Destination host you are transferring files to

Each Connection object has either an FTP, FTPS, FTPES, or SFTP protocol and all the necessary additional options to connect to the host. Optionally, FTP Connection objects let you configure the connection through an FTP or a SOCKS proxy server. For more information, see Connecting the FTP Agent to the FTP Servers.

(Optional) Set Up SFTP Key Authentication

This documentation describes how to define SFTP key authentication on a UNIX OS. On Windows, there are several software products that set up key authentication, each is different. For more information, see your vendor's documentation.

For more information, see SFTP Key Authentication for UNIX.

(Optional) Enable Remote Execution

You must enable the remote execution function to be able to tun commands on the remote system (UNIX only). You do this in the FTP Agent definition. For more information, see Defining the FTP Agent.

(Optional) Set Up SSL

See Setting Up SSL for the FTP Agent.

Define FTP Jobs

See Defining FTP Jobs.

See also:

FTP Agent