Normal operation for Syncsort Capacity Management is for Control Center to connect to target systems and rerieve data. This is called pull mode. Acquire for Windows - and only Acquire for Windows - has the ability to copy data from its local directories to an FTP or FTPS server. Control Center then communicates with the FTP server to send Capture Profiles and retrieve captured data. This use of a staging server between Acquire for Windows and Control Center is called Push Mode.
All Acquire For Windows versions from v7.50 onwards have a push capability using FTP. Acquire for Windows v8.80 and later includes an FTPS capability.
Do not confuse FTPS with SFTP.
FTPS provides an extra layer of security for the FTP protocol by the use of Transport Layer Security (TLS) Secure Sockets Layers (SSL) which makes it much more secure than native FTP.
SFTP is the Secure Shell File Transfer Program. They both do the same thing from a user’s point of view, that is securely move data from one system to another across a TCP/IP network by encrypting data with very strong algorithms, but they do it in very different ways.
For ease of reading, in the rest of this document “Acquire” solely means “Acquire for Windows”, and unless specifically mentioned “FTP” also means “and FTPS”.
Capture of data by Acquire when is push mode is exactly the same as in pull mode, that is VMware, SQL Server, Exchange, and IIS data capture or connections to other systems through WMI work the same way.
When Acquire is in push mode, it periodically connects to an FTP server and transfers its captured data. Control Center also connects periodically to the FTP server to collect data and process it into a database.
The connection between Acquire and the FTP server is initiated by the Acquire. Note however that even in a push configuration, some communication is still initiated by the Control Center, but only to the FTP server, for example, sending a new Capture Profile from Control Center to the FTP server from where the Acquire can retrieve it.
If you require an entirely “push up” configuration, review Installing Syncsort Capacity Management Concentrator. This can cater for UNIX, Linux and System z targets as well as Windows targets.