Week 4 Blog

FTP Servers/Service-Level Agreements

Basics of FTP

The file transfer protocol is how files are transferred and copied to a server or client. An example of an FTP is the secure file transfer protocol, which was used in this week’s lab. Accessing a secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) is relatively easy. The user must log in and the server will ask for a password. Once the encrypted password is sent the user has access to the directory.

FTP Server Versus File-Sharing Server

I mentioned that FTP transfers and copies files. FPTs are not a file sharing server. One difference is how each one transfers files. If you ever downloaded a file from the internet and you lost connection, you know you must start over. What’s great about file transfer protocol is that if you lose connection, you simply resume the download at the last packet that was transferred correctly. FTP works best when transferring files from one computer to another.

Configuring a Secure FTP Server

Security is needed when it comes to an FTP server. It’s very easy to overwrite or delete the wrong file (especially when only dealing with text. During the lab we this week we kept on changing the credentials as to who can send an receive files using a FTP server. This was done by making various changes to the vsftpd.conf file. Once you open the file, you’ll see configurations like anonymous_enable, local_enable, write_enable. These parameters restrict certain functions that can be dangerous if untouched.

FTP Clients

This week we only used a command line FTP. We used get and put from each of the machines to send and receive text files. This isn’t as convenient as using a GUI if you’re still learning Linux commands. Most GUI FTPs are clients like look like a file browser of a operating system.

Service-Level Agreements

A service-level agreement also abbreviated as SLA is  an agreement between service providers and their client. The most straight forward aspects of SLAs are the costs of everything which includes web servers, SFTP servers, and overages. Quality, availability, and responsibilities are outlined in the service-level agreement.