You can use a third-party Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) client to connect to your Cloud Platform environments and work directly with your files, backups, and import folders.

Before you begin

To connect with and use SFTP with your Cloud Platform-based applications:

• Register your public SSH key with Cloud Platform: 
  To connect to a Cloud Platform infrastructure, you must have an SSH private/public key pair and register the public key in Cloud Platform. For information about how to do this, see Getting started with SSH.

   

  Acquia Cloud Classic Only

  After you make changes to your codebase using live development, you must commit all the changes to your Cloud Platform repository, or else the changes will be lost when you exit live development.

   

Selecting an SFTP client

You can use any client that supports SFTP connections to remote infrastructure. Here are a few possibilities to consider:

• Cyberduck - MacOS
• Transmit - MacOS
• WinSCP - Windows

Example

Here is an example demonstrating how to connect to Cloud Platform with SFTP, based on WinSCP:

1. Start the WinSCP application.

2. On the WinSCP Login window, select Session and enter the following:

   
   1. In File protocol, select SFTP.
   2. In the Cloud Platform user interface, access the Overview page for an environment. For more information, visit working with environments. This page has the information that you can use in the following steps.
   3. In Host name, enter the full DNS infrastructure name of the Cloud Platform infrastructure that you want to connect to. For example, in [email protected], the Host name is the value after "@", which is examplestg.ssh.prod.acquia-sites.com.
   4. In User name, enter [site].[env], where [site] is the sitename, and [env] is the environment you want to connect to (for example, prod, test, or dev).
   5. In Password, do not enter any details.

Connecting to Cloud Platform with an SFTP client

Example

Here is an example demonstrating how to connect to Cloud Platform with SFTP, based on WinSCP:

1. Start the WinSCP application.

2. On the WinSCP Login window, select Session and enter the following:

   
   1. In File protocol, select SFTP.
   2. In the Cloud Platform user interface, access the Overview page for an environment. For more information, visit working with environments. This page has the information that you can use in the following steps.
   3. In Host name, enter the full DNS infrastructure name of the Cloud Platform infrastructure that you want to connect to. For example, in [email protected], the Host name is the value after "@", which is examplestg.ssh.prod.acquia-sites.com.
   4. In User name, enter [site].[env], where [site] is the sitename, and [env] is the environment you want to connect to (for example, prod, test, or dev).
   5. In Password, do not enter any details.

3. Select Advanced.

   
4. On the Advanced Site Settings page, select Directories.
5. In Remote directory, change to the live development folder for your application’s Development environment: /mnt/files/[site].dev/files
6. In Local directory, change to the docroot directory in your local code repository.
7. On the Advanced Site Settings page, select Authentication.
8. In Private key file, select your private key. You must convert your SSH key into a format compatible with WinSCP. You can use PuTTYgen (which is in the WinSCP installation package) to convert your key into the .ppk format required by WinSCP. For more information, see Converting SSH keys for WinSCP.
9. Select Ok.
10. In the Save session as dialog, enter [site].[env], where [site] is the sitename, and where [env] is the environment you want to connect to (one of prod, test, or dev).
11. Select Login to connect to your Cloud Platform infrastructure.