Category: Knowledge Base

How to: use a CA-issued certificate (the long way)

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Syncplify.me Server! version: 4.0.0+

If you already own an X.509 (SSL/TLS) digital certificate in PFX format, you know how simple it is to import it into your Syncplify.me Server! and use it.

But many of our customers asked for a tutorial on the longer procedure of requesting a digital certificate to a certification authority (CA) via a certificate signing request (CSR). So here’s the fully documented procedure for you.

First of all you have to generate the CSR, and to do that you will simply go to the Security->FTP(E/S) menu and select the option in the picture below from the certificate drop-down menu: Continue reading

What’s new in the upcoming Syncplify.me Server! v5

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Syncplify.me Server! version: 5.0.0+

While the step from v3 to v4 was somewhat “epic” (as 80%+ of the code was rewritten from scratch) the upcoming Syncplify.me Server! v5 will, instead, build upon the rock-solid foundation of v4 and expand and improve its features significantly. Version 5 will also be our most cloud-enabled version to date.

Here’s a list of some of the most important upcoming new features our users will find in Syncplify.me Server! v5: Continue reading

White paper: a solution for healthcare

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This totally free White Paper discusses the needs of healthcare providers and institutions, debunks some myths, and explains how to achieve the required levels of security and compliance.

Feel free to download it and use it under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

Download “Solution-for-Healthcare-Complete.pdf” Solution-for-Healthcare-Complete.pdf – Downloaded 1201 times – 732 KB

Ensuring Syncplify’s MongoDB instance safety

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Syncplify.me Server! version: 4.0.0+

In light of the recent news regarding ransomware targeting MongoDB, we would like to inform all of our users and customers that we are actively working to add support for MongoDB’s authentication directly inside our software.

In the meantime, though, it is very important to understand that:

  • set aside the hype, a good network security model already addresses 99% of all the issues of this type (DB-connectivity related)
  • Syncplify’s specific MongoDB instance uses port 28038 (instead of the standard 27017) and is therefore not targeted by the above mentioned ransomware
  • Syncplify’s specific MondoDB instance only accepts requests from localhost (127.0.0.1) unless you have explicitly created a Windows Firewall rule

Because of the above reasons we believe that all Syncplify.me Server! instances deployed in non-HA mode are safe unless the network and Windows Firewall configuration has been altered by the users/customers themselves.

For HA (high-availability) instances, we do strongly recommend our users/customers to make sure their network firewall and Windows Firewall rules only allow connections to the DB server(s) from the machines running the SFTP front-end nodes. No other machine should be allowed to connect to your DB server(s).

This said, we want to reassure everyone – once again – that we are also actively working (with high priority) to add MongoDB authentication directly into our software.

Adding users from CSV file using PowerShell and SMSCLI

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Syncplify.me Server! version: 4.0.8+

Many of our users are asking how to add multiple user accounts to Syncplify.me Server! at once. Most of them already have a CSV (comma-separated value) text file with username and passwords of the user profiles to be added, so it would make a lot of sense for them to have a simple procedure to import such users from the existing CVS file. You can actually do that very easily by writing a tiny PowerShell script that internally calls our SMSCLI (Syncplify.me Server! Command-Line Interface), and this article shows one way to do so.

The first step is to make sure that we know what VFS these imported users will be using as their “home directory”. For the sake of this example (and to keep it as easy as possible) we will use a parametric VFS like the one shown in the image here below: Continue reading

High-Availability (HA) with Syncplify.me Server! v4

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Syncplify.me Server! version: 4.0.17+

Version 4.x of Syncplify.me Server! introduced a remarkable amount of new features, and improved some of the existing ones greatly. The latter is the case of high availability deployments, which have been rendered much easier and a lot more powerful.

This article explains one way (not the only possible one) to install and deploy a highly available multi-node Syncplify.me Server! in your network.

First of all, let’s prepare 3 virtual machines:

  • 1 VM for the DB and HTTP/REST server
  • 2 VMs for the SFTP server nodes

Continue reading

Monitor a directory, and upload/archive files as they arrive

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Syncplify.me FTP Script! version: 3.1.6+

Monitoring a directory for certain files, and as soon as they become available (someone puts them in that directory) upload them somewhere else and then move the original files to a different location (archive) on the local disk. This is one of the most common questions from our FTP Script! users.

For such reason we have prepared the sample script below. It will probably fit the most common cases, and it’s a decent learning tool as well as starting point to create your own (more complex) scripts to accomplish your very own particular task.  Continue reading

Hiding certain files from a directory listing

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Syncplify.me Server! version: 4.0.24+

As of version 4.0.24, Syncplify.me Server! has introduced two new features:

  • the BeforeSendDirListToClient event handler
  • the RemoveFromDirList method in the scripting framework

These features can be used together to hide certain files from a directory listing. This is useful, for example, when you don’t want certain users to see certain file types when they connect to your SFTP server, but you still want to show such files to other users.

The first thing to do is creating a script. Let’s assume, for the sake of this example, that you want to hide some AutoCAD® files, and specifically all DWG and DXF files. Then you will need a script like this:

Once the script is ready, you will have to open the user profile you want to apply the rule to, and add an event handler to it, like this: Continue reading

Using the DiskAES256 encrypted VFS

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Syncplify.me Server! version: 4.0.0+

As of version 4.0, Syncplify.me Server! has introduced storage access via VFS (Virtual File System). This new storage virtualization layer allows an administrator to choose among different ways to access the underlying file system; one of them, that encrypts/decrypts data at-rest on the fly, is the DiskAES256 VFS.

When a VFS is of DiskAES256 type, all files uploaded to that VFS will be encrypted and then saved to disk. Similarly, when an SFTP client downloads them, the files will be read from disk and decrypted on-the-fly before they are sent to the client over the network (don’t worry SSH/SFTP network encryption still applies).

So, because of the way it works, as described here above, when you create a new VFS of type DiskAES256 you have to make sure it points to an empty path/directory (that has no files in it). Otherwise it would try to decrypt existing files that are not encrypted in the first place, and fail. Continue reading

Making Syncplify.me Server! work with SSHFS/WebEx

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Syncplify.me Server! version: 4.0.19+

SSHFS is a FUSE-based filesystem client for the SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP); it’s very common among Linux users to mount SFTP targets as local directories. WebEx is a well-known teamwork collaboration tool by Cisco that uses SSHFS to back-up its data to a remote SFTP server.

Unfortunately, the coupling of SSHFS/WebEx – at the time this article is being written – has at least two problems that can cause serious issues to servers that implement the SFTP protocol and its extensions correctly. Continue reading