Azure SFTP server with multiple user accounts which could be managed

Question

I need an SFTP server hosted on Azure. The important thing is that it should support multiple user accounts and their management at runtime ( via an interface or API), i.e. password reset, account blocking/unblocking (preferably user groups also).

I have found some guides on how to set up an SFTP server on Azure:

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/samples/azure-samples/sftp-creation-template/sftp-on-azure/
• https://charbelnemnom.com/how-to-deploy-sftp-service-on-microsoft-azure/

Their major drawback is that every change ( addition of a new user, password update etc.) requires a new deployment which is not acceptable.

Also, there is an SFTP functionality for the Azure Blob Storage:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/secure-file-transfer-protocol-support

This functionality is still in preview and allows only to add local users in the Azure portal. Unfortunately, other - more advanced features like account blocking etc - are missing. It is also not possible to manage the user accounts from the code.

There exist some products on Azure marketplace provided by external companies, like Azure SFTP Gateway which supports all functionalities listed above. I am not sure about the further maintenance of these products and I couldn't find any information about SLA or similar things for these products.

I would like to ask if there is a reliable resource or a way to set up a resource that could serve as an SFTP server and meet the requirements listed above? If there is no explicit solution, maybe there is a way to integrate an SFTP server with a database or do something else?

Answer 1

Presently, we only support the SFTP for Azure Blob Storage.

SFTP for Azure Blob Storage supports multiple local user accounts and container-level permissions. You can use the Portal, ARM, PowerShell or CLI to manage users, permissions and passwords/keys. You can also disable individual users by disabling ssh key and password authentication.

Connect to Azure Blob Storage using SFTP (preview) | Microsoft Docs

az storage account local-user | Microsoft Docs