How to transfer a file from S3 to someones SFTP server

Question

I have a workflow need. I have a customer that does not want to deal with our S3 folders where we drop their files. They want us to send the files directly to their SFTP account. When I unload files from my backend they automatically unload to S3 from AWS services. As this is a one time request per customer I don't wish to set up an automated transfer protocol in a Lamda or bash script. nor do I wish to go through the hassle of copying the file to my local server only to post it to the SFTP site. I would prefer to just right click on the file and select to transfer to SFTP location. Does anyone know if AWS has any plans to add file transfer protocol support into the S3 console UI? (SFTP, FTP, etc.)

What would be even better is if AWS S3 allowed all files dropped in an S3 bucket location to be automatically transferred to the SFTP location defined -- in the scenario where the customer never wishes to deal with S3, but we need to use it.

Answer 1

There are a few ways to do this, since you are looking for the most easiest way i would suggest you to install s3fuse on a linux server, this enables you to mount s3 as a file system. You can directly mount it on the sftp server and copy them locally , below is the URL for s3Fuse.

https://cloud.netapp.com/blog/amazon-s3-as-a-file-system

The other method would be to use the AWS CLI to do recursive copy , this would involve installing AWS CLI and generate API keys. Below is an example of the command.

aws s3 cp s3://mybucket/test.txt test2.txt

You can revoke the API keys once you are done with the transfer!

Answer 2

Given the current capabilities of Amazon S3, automating a send of files from Amazon S3 to an SFTP target would require the use of an AWS Lambda function.