FTP (remote file system) connection

To access your data with the FTP protocol, create a connection asset for it.

FTP is a standard communication protocol that is used to transfer files from a server to a client on a computer network.

Create an FTP connection

To create the connection asset, you need these connection details:

Connection mode: The connection method configured on the FTP server:
- Anonymous
- Basic authentication (with username and password)
- SFTP Tectia: Transfer data sets that are in Multiple Virtual Storage (MVS) format to or from an IBM z/OS mainframe computer. MVS data sets use a period (.) to separate the qualifiers in the data set names. To write to an MVS data set, select Access MVS Dataset and enter the file transfer advice (FTADV) strings in key-value pairs separated by commas. For information, see the Tectia documentation.
- SSH: File transfer over a secure channel that uses the Secure Shell protocol. Also requires username and password.
- SSL: File transfer that uses File Transport Protocol (FTP), which supports secure transmission via SSL (sslTLSv2) protocol. Also requires username and password.
Hostname or IP address
Port number of the FTP server
SSH mode: Private key and Key passphrase

Authentication method:
- Username and password
- Username, password, private key. If you use an encrypted private key, you will need a key passphrase.
- Username and private key. If you use an encrypted private key, you will need a key passphrase.

If you use a private key, make sure that the key is an RSA private key that is generated by the ssh-keygen tool. The private key must be in the PEM format.

For Private connectivity, to connect to a database that is not externalized to the internet (for example, behind a firewall), you must set up a secure connection. This selection is available for the SSH connection mode only.

Choose the method for creating a connection based on where you are in the platform

In a project: Click Assets > New asset > Connect to a data source. See Adding a connection to a project.
In a catalog: Click Add to catalog > Connection. See Adding a connection asset to a catalog.
In a deployment space: Click Import assets > Data access > Connection. See Adding data assets to a deployment space.
In the Platform assets catalog: Click New connection. See Adding platform connections.

Next step: Add data assets from the connection

Where you can use this connection

You can use FTP connections in the following workspaces and tools:

Projects

Data Refinery (Watson Studio or IBM Knowledge Catalog)
DataStage (DataStage service). See Connecting to a data source in DataStage.
SPSS Modeler (Watson Studio)

Catalogs

Platform assets catalog
Other catalogs (IBM Knowledge Catalog)

Supported file types

The FTP connection supports these file types: Avro, CSV, Delimited text, Excel, JSON, ORC, Parquet, SAS, SAV, SHP, and XML.

Parent topic: Supported connections