In earlier releases, FTP load balancing was supported as separate configurations for Active FTP and Passive FTP with their respective configuration methods. These configuration methods are still supported, but it is recommended to migrate the individual FTP Virtual Services to native FTP profile-based configuration to simplify the configuration and long-term supportability.

Upgrade of FTP VS with older config model to 22.1.1

FTP VS configured with older configuration model will continue to work once upgraded to 22.1.1.

Migration of FTP VS with old config to Native FTP Profile

FTP VS with old configuration can be migrated to native FTP profile VS in either of 2 methods:

  1. Retain the VIP IP: You can disable the FTP VS and clean up the unnecessary configurations.

    1. For the case of Passive FTP VS:

      1. Update the VS service ports appropriately.

      2. Clean up the old L4 data scripts.

    2. For the case of Active FTP VS:

      1. Detach the NAT Profile to the Network Service and clean up as appropriate.

      2. Detach the Network Service from the Service Engine group and clean up as appropriate.

  2. Create new FTP VS (new VIP IP): You can create a fresh new FTP VS config based on their requirements, as explained in the above FTP Virtual Service Configuration section. Post validations can clean up the old FTP VS configuration.

You can deactivate/ enable the respective desired FTP data modes in both the methods.

Caveats and Limitations

  • All SE HA modes are supported for Virtual Servers configured with the Native FTP profile.

    • The older config model has limitations for Active FTP mode to work with Legacy (Active/ Standby) Service Engine HA mode.

  • FTPS is not yet supported with the Native FTP profile.

  • Traffic mirroring is not supported for VS with a Native FTP profile.

  • Do not deactivate both active and passive FTP (that is, do not set both deactivate_active and deactivate_passive true) at the same time.

  • Native FTP profile is supported in all ecosystems. However, for Public clouds, such as, AWS, Azure, GCP, you have to manually update the Security/ Firewall for the FTP data ports (currently, the Controller does not automate the FTP data ports to be enabled).

  • VIP sharing is not allowed for virtual service, which has an FTP application profile.

  • Consistent Hash is the only load balancing algorithm supported for virtual service with FTP application profile.