Transfer Data with Standard Utilities

You can use standard utilities such as SFTP, SCP, and FileZilla to transfer data between your local machine and your cloud cluster. To do so, you need either an SSH key pair or a password from the administrator of your cluster. For details on how a cluster administrator can create an SSH key pair or a password for cluster users, see Download SSH Key Identity File. These examples show you how you can then transfer a file on your local machine, /home/cloudtmp/emem.mat, to a folder /shared/persisted on the headnode of your cloud cluster.

SFTP

After you have been granted access to the cluster as clouduser either using an SSH private key or a password, you can use SFTP to transfer data between your local machine and the cloud cluster. The sftp utility is a command-line interactive interface, similar to ftp, that lets you connect to a remote host, navigate its file system, and transfer files.

This example shows how to use sftp at a UNIX command prompt if you have a private SSH key pair. Specify your private key pair in /home/.ssh/your-key.pem. Replace <headnode-ip-address> with the IP address of the headnode of your cluster.

cd /home/cloudtmp
sftp -i /home/.ssh/your-key.pem \
  clouduser@<headnode-ip-address>:/shared/persisted
sftp> put emem.mat
sftp> ls
emem.mat
sftp> exit

If you have a password instead, omit -i /home/.ssh/your-key.pem and enter the password when prompted.

To transfer folders instead of individual files, add the -r option for recursive copy. For more information about the sftp utility, use the following commands:

sftp -help
man sftp

SCP

After you have been granted access to the cluster as clouduser either using an SSH private key or a password, you can use scp to transfer data between your local machine and the cloud cluster. The scp utility lets you access the remote host, and transfer the file, in a single command.

This example shows the UNIX version of the command if you have a private SSH key pair. Specify your private key pair in /home/.ssh/your-key.pem. Replace <headnode-ip-address> with the IP address of the headnode of your cluster.

scp -i /home/.ssh/your-key.pem emem.mat \
  clouduser@<headnode-ip-address>:/shared/persisted

If you have a password instead, omit the -i /home/.ssh/your-key.pem and specify the password when prompted.

To transfer folders instead of individual files, add the -r option for recursive copy. For more information about the scp utility, use the following commands.

scp -help
man scp

FileZilla

After you have been granted access to the cluster as clouduser either using an SSH private key or a password, you can use FileZilla to transfer data between your local machine and the cloud cluster. FileZilla is a GUI utility which lets you connect to the cloud cluster head node and transfer files with an easy drag-and-drop technique.

Follow these steps to transfer the local file C:\cloudtmp\emem.mat to the folder /shared/persisted on your cloud cluster.

1. Start FileZilla, and set its Local site to C:\cloudtmp\emem.mat.

2. To connect FileZilla to your cloud cluster file system, specify the host that is the head node of your cloud cluster. The user name is always clouduser. Use port 22 for SFTP connections.

3. If you have a password, provide the password. Otherwise, provide your SSH key identity file under Edit > Settings. In the Select pane of the Settings dialog box, choose SFTP. In the Public Key Authentication pane, click Add keyfile. Navigate to the key file that you downloaded from the Cloud Center for this cluster. On Windows, the .pem format key file you download from Cloud Center is not directly compatible with FileZilla, but when you select that key file, FileZilla can automatically convert the format. When the key file appears in the list, click OK to dismiss the Settings dialog box.

4. When FileZilla is configured with the proper key file, click Quickconnect.

5. After connecting, set the Remote site path to /shared/persisted.

6. To complete the transfer, drag the file emem.mat from the local column to the remote column.