What is Hybrid Cloud?
Hybrid cloud combines private and public cloud services to collect, process, store, and exchange data. Secure hybrid cloud solutions are one of the most popular cloud environment strategies today, in part because they offer organizations greater flexibility than infrastructure that is either fully on-prem or fully in the cloud.
Some organizations cannot move entirely to the cloud, whether due to cost, trading partner requirements, industry standards, or government regulations, but still want to take advantage of emerging cloud-based tools. With a hybrid deployment, and by using both cloud-based and on-prem solutions, organization have greater agency over what data stays on-site and which processes can move to the cloud.
What are MFT Agents?
GoAnywhere MFT’s Agents are lightweight tools that help to automate and centralize your workflows across systems. Also called remote agents, they provide real-time, remote file transfer capabilities controlled centrally through an MFT server like GoAnywhere. Agents can work in various environments, including within your internal network, at each of your remote sites, within cloud environments, and other remote locations.
How Agents Work
MFT Agents are built to streamline file movements for organizations that have numerous locations. They offer flexibility and convenience to admins, who can simply configure and schedule file transfer processes for the agent to execute and watch as the agents fulfill the same tasks at different stores, offices, or branches of your organization.
GoAnywhere is the hub, and agents are the spokes, reaching out to each part of the system on your behalf. You can have as many “spokes” as you have locations, since you only have to outline the functions of an agent once before deploying it to any number of systems. Because it’s so easy to deploy agents on a large scale, each of your data centers can move forward and process information identically and simultaneously.
For each workflow that you want to carry out, simply create the agent, set up an installation package, and deploy it to the applicable systems. When you use MFT Agents, you can reduce:
- Configuration time by centralizing your deployment
- Time and effort spent on software updates
- Repetitive tasks by deploying agents across multiple systems simultaneously
Related Reading: Do You Need an MFT Agent?
Recent updates to GoAnywhere now provide functionality that allow agents to access locations with different permissions than the central MFT server, for further flexibility and granular permissions.
Using Agents with Your Hybrid Cloud
Agents can be deployed to virtually any operating system, which can be especially helpful when you have a hybrid cloud setup. Agents are useful because they can synchronize processes in each location, including within both your cloud and on-prem setups.
Even with a disparate hybrid cloud environment, agents can help you secure your file transfers from a centrally managed environment, including with monitoring, scheduling, and alerting features. Plus, you can manage all instances of new agent deployment from a centralized location instead of repeating the same process in each location.
Agents can help you address key cloud security considerations that help you maintain a secure hybrid cloud.
Related Reading: How GoAnywhere MFT Can Help You Transition to the Cloud
Cybersecurity & Encryption
Cybersecurity is an important consideration across all IT, and MFT Agents can help safeguard your processes. Communications between each agent and GoAnywhere is encrypted using SSL/TLS, and multi-step authentication establishes trust between the agents and GoAnywhere’s centralized browser-based console. As extensions of GoAnywhere, workflows you set up within agents can securely transfer or archive files, translate data, work with databases on the system, execute native commands, or perform other local file system tasks.
Automation
Automation is especially important for organizations looking to migrate to the cloud, since it streamlines and simplifies data movement and helps to reduce manual tasks and user errors. Automating with agents allows you to configure workflows that process files within the cloud, between environments, and within private networks. With agents, you can automate portions of a workflow, or the entire workflow end-to-end.
Related Reading: Why You Should Use Scheduled File Transfer Software
Compliance
Organizations must follow data security requirements, including for data in the cloud. Using agents to process data within your cloud can help you avoid human error, inadvertent data breaches, and even fines associated with non-compliance. By automating file movements, you can keep data within a set path and away from prying eyes.
Other Agent Setups and Use Cases
Agents don’t only support secure hybrid cloud setups. Organizations use agents for fully on-prem setups, and exclusively within cloud applications.
- Internal networks: Installing agents on servers or workstations in your network allows you to transfer files to and from GoAnywhere and other systems for processing, and enables you to perform additional workflows on systems with agents deployed, including copying files, running commands, and parsing data.
- Remote locations: Automatically monitor folders and move files when you install agents in remote locations. Organizations with multiple stores or branch offices often deploy agents across locations to better synchronize files between these locations and the corporate data center.
- Trading partner systems: Installing agents on servers owned by your trading partners can streamline your processes; when a trading partner places data into locations monitored by an agent, GoAnywhere will automatically pull the file into your organization’s network. You can also push files to your trading partners via agents.
Besides the many ways you can implement agents within your organization, the use case applications are practically endless: synchronize your store’s files with other locations, move PHI between a data center and satellite clinics, and more.
