Remote Server Mount

Files.com's Remote Server Mount feature gives you the ability connect a specific folder on Files.com to a Remote Server in a real time manner.

The Remote Server can be a third party cloud, another Files.com account, an on-premise server running the Files.com On-Premise Agent, or any server accessible via FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, S3 protocol or anything else.

That folder then becomes a client, or window, accessing the files stored in your remote server or cloud in real time.

Remote Server Mount is also a way to leverage Files.com's apps, API, and workflows without using our storage services.

Once you configure a Mount, any operation you perform on or inside that folder will act directly on the remote in real time. Whether you are dropping a file into that folder, deleting a file, creating a subfolder, or performing any other file/folder operations your Files.com user has permissions for, those operations will "pass through" to the remote in real time.

This powerful feature enables a wide variety of use cases such as, accessing files on a counterparty (client or vendor)'s cloud without provisioning individual access to individual users, reducing storage costs by leveraging on-premise or bulk storage solutions, enabling applications to access 3rd party clouds via Files.com API, FTP, SFTP, or Files.com Apps and many more.

The remote server types can be found in the list of Cloud Storage and Content Sharing Integrations.

First, make sure that the Remote Server you wish to mount has already been added and configured. Available Remote Servers can be found by typing Remote Servers into the search bar at the top of every page, and then clicking on the matching result.

Navigate to the folder that you want to mount the Remote Server onto. You can also create a folder if one doesn't exist.

Click the button containing a flag icon, at the upper right of the page, to show the configurable folder attributes, and select the Remote server mount option.

Select the desired Remote server from the available choices and optionally, enter a Name and Description for this mount. It's always good practice to enter a meaningful name and description for colleagues, or yourself, to refer to later.

Select the Remote Folder by either typing in the folder path or by selecting the Choose a different remote folder link and selecting the remote folder.

Save the updated settings for this folder by clicking the Save button. The folder view will refresh and show the contents of the remote server.

The Root, or Home, folder of your site cannot be selected for mounting a remote server. This would cause your entire site to be hosted on the remote server and prohibit you from being able to implement other Remote Mounts for your site. If you wish your entire site to be a Remote Server Mount then we strongly recommend using a Child Site, which can have its Root folder configured for a Remote Mount by using our CLI App or API.

You can set up a Remote Server Mount programmatically using the Remote Server Mount Behavior API.

You can also configure the Remote Server Mount from the command line using the Files.com CLI App.

First, you'll need the ID of the Remote server which can be found using this command:

files-cli remote-servers list

Then you can configure the Remote Server Mount using this command:

files-cli behaviors create --path "path/to/folder" --behavior "remote_server_mount" --value '{ "remote_server_id": <ID>, "remote_path": "/remote/server/path/to/remote/folder" }'

In the above command, replace <ID> with the ID found with the previous list command.

Most folder settings available in Files.com work with Remote Server Mounts, with the exception of the File Expiration and GPG Encryption settings.

We are aware that File Expiration and GPG Encryption would make great features to support on Remote Mounts and we have internal feature requests filed to support both of them.

The behavior of Webhooks, Automations, and Action/History Logging may also be a bit surprising on Mounts. We only log actions and history for file operations performed via Files.com. This is because we otherwise have no visibility into how, when, or by whom any files are modified on the Remote Server.

Since Webhooks are fired based on Action logging, they will not be fired when a file is changed on the remote server without going through Files.com. The same limitation also applies to Automations triggered by actions.

If you require Webhooks or Automations to be triggered on new files, we recommend you consider a Remote Server Sync instead of a Remote Server Mount.

All of the other folder settings, like Share Links, Inboxes, etc. will all work fine with Remote Server Mounts.

Whenever you run a Move via the web UI, we will automatically update Share Links, Permissions, Styles, Notifications, and Folder Settings (including Inboxes) to the new destination.

This happens automatically and you do not have to make any changes for these things continue to function normally.

However, this only occurs when you do a direct move. If you Copy a folder from one location to another, no metadata or settings will be transferred during the copy.

This is why we recommend doing everything using a Move, rather than a Copy followed by a Delete.

The case sensitivity of a remote server may be different from the case sensitivity of Files.com. There may be unexpected effects when moving or copying files and folders between systems with differing case sensitivity.

Checksums or hashes are not available for files stored on a remote server mount. Calculating these values would require transferring the entire file from the remote server to Files.com servers first, incurring potentially large data transfer costs for our customers. If your business processes require checksums to validate file integrity, you can configure a Remote Server Sync instead.

Adding remote servers in Files.com is easy. As a Site Administrator, type Remote Servers in the search bar at the top of every page, then click on the matching result. Click on the Add New Remote Server button to select the type of server you want to add. Note that only Site Administrators can add or configure remote servers at this time.

Depending on the type of server you are adding, you may need to have different details on hand.

When you select the remote server type, the form will adapt to prompt you for the information needed specifically for that type. Any optional settings for your selected type will also appear on the form.

There are no limits for the number of Remote Server Mounts that you can configure on the Files.com platform. However, some systems limit the number of connections made to them. Contact the system administrator of the remote servers to determine what their limits are.

Maintaining a one-to-one relationship between Mounts and remote servers will allow you to have as many Mounts as you require. For example, if you have 50 remote servers then you can have 50 Mounts, each to one of the remote servers, without any issues.

When there is a many-to-one relationship between Mounts and a remote server, then the number of Mounts will be limited by the restrictions and performance of the remote server. For example, if you have 50 Mounts set up with the remote server, and it only supports 5 concurrent connections, then only 5 of the Mounts will work at a time.

Finding the exact number of Mounts for optimal performance will be based on factors such as the concurrent connection limitations of the remote server, the connection protocol's limitations, and the performance of the remote server. Calibrate the number of Mounts until you find the optimal quantity that work best with the remote server.