webMethods.io MFT enables you to create a Virtual File System (VFS) to provide an abstract view of resources in your remote FTP and SFTP servers. This capability enables users and client applications to access a variety of file structures in a uniform way.
Default Virtual Folders
webMethods.io MFT offers a default virtual folder backed by cloud storage. The location information for this folder is inaccessible, but you can create subfolders within it and configure new virtual folders pointing to these subfolders. You can grant users access to these virtual folders.
Adding subfolders under the default virtual folder location
To add virtual folders under the default virtual folder location
In webMethods.io MFT, go to Virtual folders.
Choose the virtual folder named default on the Virtual folders page.
On the right panel, select Create folder and click .
In the Add folder dialog box, type a unique name for the subfolder and click Add.
Note: Subfolders cannot be deleted from webMethods.io MFT user interface. Users with Delete folder permission can delete the subfolders only if they are connected through listeners.
Configuring folders with a default virtual folder location
In webMethods.io MFT, go to Virtual folders.
On the Virtual folders page, click .
In the Add virtual folder dialog box, type a unique name for the virtual folder and click Add.
On the right panel, expand Location and select Configure with default virtual folder location.
Click Browse. Select the path to a subfolder under the default virtual folder created previously and click Save.
Note: Folders configured with a default virtual folder location cannot be reconfigured with a remote location.
Adding a Virtual Folder
Create a Virtual File System (VFS) by creating one or more virtual folders, in a manner in which you typically arrange in a file system hierarchy. Although the information might be stored across remote file systems, a virual folder makes it appear as a cohesive data collection in the VFS.
To create a virtual folder
In weMethods.io MFT, go to Virtual folders.
On the Virtual folders page, click .
In the Add virtual folder dialog box, type a unique name for the virtual folder and click Add. The new virtual folder appears in the folders list.
Searching for Virtual Folders
To search for a virtual folder
In webMethods.io MFT, go to Virtual folders.
On the Virtual folders page, specify all or one of the following search criteria:
Field
Description
Partner
Select one of the following:
All partners. Search for virtual folders associated with all the partners in webMethods.io MFT.
Specific partner. Search for virtual folders associated with a specific partner in webMethods.io MFT. Select this option, type the name of the partner, and click Ok.
User
Select one of the following:
All users. Search for virtual folders associated with all the users in webMethods.io MFT.
Specific user. Search for virtual folders associated with a specific user in webMethods.io MFT. Select this option, type the name of the user, and click Ok.
Folder name
Type the name of the specific virtual folder you want to view.
Click Reset to reset values or click Apply for the changes to take effect. The virtual folders list is populated with the virtual folders matching your search criteria.
Modifying a Virtual Folder
To modify a virtual folder
In webMethods.io MFT, go to Virtual folders.
On the Virtual folders page, click on a virtual folder that you want to edit and modify the required configuration settings for the virtual folder.
Click Save.
Configuring Additional Settings for a Virtual Folder
To configure additional settings
In webMethods.io MFT, go to Virtual folders.
On the Folders tile, click on a virtual folder for which you want to configure additional settings.
Type a different virtual folder name.
Select one of the partner options:
Option
Description
No Partner
Select this option if you do not want to associate the virtual folder with a partner or your enterprise.
Enterprise
Select this option if you want to associate the virtual folder with your enterprise. Type a new enterprise name and click Create.
Partner
Select this option if you want to associate the virtual folder with a partner. You can either select a partner from the list or type a new partner name. Click Create to associate your virtual folder with a partner.
Configure the location in one of the following ways:
Option
Description
Configure a remote location
To specify a file path in a remote server, select this option, a protocol (transport mechanism) from the list, and type the file path location. For example, FTP://host:port/DestinationFolder/. Type a username and password for the remote server. See Supported protocols and Supported storage types for more information.
Add a user to the virtual folder and configure the permissions with the username. The user can now view, download, upload, delete, create a folder, delete folder, or rename the folder.
If you grant user permissions to a parent folder, the user inherits the same permissions for all subfolders.
If you grant user permissions to a subfolder, the user inherits the permission to traverse through the parent folders.
You can override the inherited permissions and specify a different set of permissions to a folder for a user. These new permissions are then inherited by the subfolders within the parent folder.
Define specific file-based encryption and decryption PGP keys for a virtual folder.
When encryption and decryption keys are configured at multiple levels such as user, listener, and virtual folder, webMethods.io MFT enforces the following order of preference: Users, Virtual folders, and Listeners.
For example, if user A accesses port 10 and uploads a file in VFS TestFolder123, then webMethods.io MFT checks if the encryption or decryption key is available for user A. If no key is available at the user level, then webMethods.io MFT checks for the virtual folder settings for a key. If no key is present at the virtual folder level, then webMethods.io MFT checks the server level settings for the key.
Note: webMethods.io MFT does not use these keys when a virtual folder is configured in a post-processing or scheduled action. If you want to configure the encryption and decryption keys in an action, create an encryption or decryption task.
Click Save.
Supported Protocols
Protocol Configurations
FTP, FTPES, and FTPS
Field
Description
Keystore Alias (Applicable only for FTPES and FTPS)
Type the certificate alias in the Keystore alias field. This key is used for certificate based login.
Connection Pool Size
Select Connection pool size to limit the number of connections created using a particular VFS. The default value is unlimited, which does not restrict the number of connections created using a particular VFS.
High availability download recovery
Select High availability download recovery if you want webMethods.io MFT to recover from a download that was not completed.
High availability upload recovery
Select High availability upload recovery if you want webMethods.io MFT to recover from an upload that was not completed.
Passive
Select Passive if you want to enable webMethods.io MFT to connect to a remote server using the passive mode. webMethods.io MFT uses the active mode by default.
Force CWD to exact directory
Select Force CWD to extract directory if you are connected to a FTP server that allows file operations only on the current directory. Enabling this option forces a change to the target directory before executing the file operations.
HTTP and HTTPS
Field
Description
Keystore Alias (Applicable only for HTTPS)
Type the certificate alias in the Keystore alias field. This key is used for certificate based login.
High availability download recovery
Select High availability download recovery if you want webMethods.io MFT to recover from a download that was not completed.
High availability upload recovery
Select High availability upload recovery if you want webMethods.io MFT to recover from an upload that was not completed.
SFTP
Field
Description
Key Alias
Type the certificate alias in the Key alias field. This key is used for certificate based login.
Preferred cipher
You can configure the preferred cipher from the list of supported cipher in the Preferred cipher field.
Excluded cipher
If you want to remove a cipher from the supported cipher list, then you can configure it in the Excluded cipher field.
SSH Fingerprint
Click Get SSH fingerprint to fetch the host key fingerprint from the remote SFTP server. You can choose to remove the SSH fingerprint, if you do not want host key fingerprint verification for the virtual folder.
Two-factor authentication
Select Two-factor authentication, if you want webMethods.io MFT to attempt both password and public key authentication to connect to the remote SFTP server configured for this VFS.
Connection Pool Size
Select Connection pool size to limit the number of connections created using a particular VFS. The default value is unlimited, which does not restrict the number of connections created using a particular VFS.
High availability download recovery
Select High availability download recovery if you want webMethods.io MFT to recover from a download that was not completed.
High availability upload recovery
Select High availability upload recovery if you want webMethods.io MFT to recover from an upload that was not completed.
SMB
Field
Description
SMB Version
Select the SMB version from the list.
SMB v1 - Select this for legacy SMB servers.
SMB v2 - Select this to support SMB Server 2 and SMB Server 3.
Dfs enabled
This is applicable only for SMB v2 option. Select Dfs enabled, if the remote SMB server is configured with a Distributed File System (DFS).
High availability download recovery
Select High availability download recovery if you want webMethods.io MFT to recover from a download that was not completed.
High availability upload recovery
Select High availability upload recovery if you want webMethods.io MFT to recover from an upload that was not completed.
WEBDAV and WEBDAVS
Field
Description
High availability download recovery
Select High availability download recovery if you want webMethods.io MFT to recover from a download that was not completed.
High availability upload recovery
Select High availability upload recovery if you want webMethods.io MFT to recover from an upload that was not completed.
Supported Storage Types
Configuring a virtual folder with Amazon-S3 bucket
Field
Description
Bucket name
Specify the Amazon-S3 bucket name.
Folder path
Specify the folder path for the bucket. If you do not specify the folder path, then the root of the bucket is considered by default.
Region name
Choose the AWS (Amazon Web Services) region from the list. This is the location where your Amazon-S3 bucket resides.
Access key ID
Specify the Access key ID to access the Amazon-S3 bucket.
Secret access key
Specify the secret key which corresponds to the Access Key ID that has the access to Amazon-S3 bucket.
Note: For more information about Amazon-S3 service, refer Amazon documentation.
Configuring a virtual folder with Hosted-S3 bucket
Field
Description
Bucket name
Specify the Hosted-S3 bucket name.
Folder path
Specify the folder path for the bucket. If you do not specify the folder path, then the root of the bucket is considered by default.
Access key ID
Specify the Access key ID to access the Hosted-S3 bucket.
Secret access key
Specify the Secret access key which corresponds to the Access key ID that has the access to Hosted-S3 bucket.
Endpoint
Specify the Endpoint to access the Hosted-S3 bucket.
URL Style
Choose one of the following addressing models:
Path. In this URL model, the hostname iss3-hosted.example.com and the bucketname is specified in the path as /bucket-name/. For example, https://s3-hosted.example.com/bucket-name/
If you want to configure the VFS with Azure storage type, then select the AZURE-FILE or AZURE-BLOB from the list. Note: webMethods.io MFT currently supports only AZURE-FILE shares and AZURE-BLOB containers.
Configuring a virtual folder with AZURE-FILE
To configure the VFS with AZURE-FILE
1.Authentication type. Specify the authentication information that must be sent to Azure storage type for authorizing access to specific resources. File share supports Shared Key and Shared Access Signature (SAS) authentication types.
Choose one of the following ways to provide the authentication information:
Option
Description
Shared Key
The shared key type passes a header with each request that is signed using the respective storage account access key. Specify the values for the following fields:
Account name. The account name that corresponds to the Azure account for the AZURE-FILE location.
Account key. The key that you create at the Azure portal for the corresponding account name.
Shared access signature (SAS)
The Shared Access Signature (SAS) type provides secure delegated access to resources in the storage account without compromising the security of the data. Additionally, control what resources the client may access, what permissions they have on those resources, and how long the SAS is valid, among other parameters.
Account name. Specify the account name that corresponds to the Azure account for the AZURE-FILE location.
SAS token. The SAS token is a string that you generate in the Azure portal for an account.
2.Location.Specify the location where the folder for the file shares resides.
Configuring a virtual folder with AZURE-BLOB
To configure the VFS with AZURE-BLOB, edit the following fields:
1.Authentication type.Specify the authentication information that must be sent to the Azure storage for authorizing the access to resources. The AZURE-BLOB supports Shared Key, Shared Access Signature (SAS), and Anonymous public access authentication types.
Choose one of the following ways to provide the authentication information:
Option
Description
Shared Key
The shared key type passes a header with each request that is signed using the respective Storage Account Access Key. Specify the values for the following fields:
Account name. The account name that corresponds to the Azure account for the blob location.
Account key. The key that you create at the Azure portal for the corresponding account name.
Shared Access Signature (SAS)
The Shared Access Signature (SAS) type provides secure delegated access to resources in your storage account without compromising the security of the data. Additionally, control what resources the client may access, what permissions they have on those resources, and how long the SAS is valid, among other parameters.
Account name. The account name that corresponds to the Azure account for the blob location.
SAS token. The SAS token is a string that you generate in the Azure portal for an account.
Anonymous public read access
The anonymous public read access type provides you with read access within a publicly accessible container without authorizing the request.
2.Storage sub-type. Select a storage sub-type. The below mentioned are the two types of storage sub-types:
Block Blob. It stores the unstructured data such as files, media, images, and documents in blocks.
Append Blob. It appends the unstructured data such as files, media, images, documents and so on.
3.Location. Specify the location where the folder for blob container resides.
4.Specify the advance configuration options as follows:
Storage size. Specifies the size of each part of the file which gets uploaded to the blob container.
Azure headers - Add additional header parameters to set the extra metadata for the blob container. Click to add the Header key and Header value information, respectively. The following are the list if supported headers:
cacheControl
contentType
contentEncoding
contentLanguage
contentDisposition
Configuring a virtual folder with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) bucket
Field
Description
Service account private key
Specify the encoded private key for a service account. This key is used to authenticate the service account and authorize it to access GCP resources.
Bucket name
Specify the GCP bucket name.
Folder path
Specify the folder path for the bucket. If you do not specify the folder path, then the root of the bucket is considered by default.
Note: Hosted-S3 and Google Cloud Platform configurations are available only on the Virtual folders tab. This cannot be configured while creating actions.