Initiating high-speed transfers

Aspera High-Speed Transfer Server (HSTS) allows an unlimited number of concurrent users to transfer files of any size at high speed using an Aspera client.

HSTS configuration and transfer testing

After you deploy the HSTS instance, you need to configure HSTS itself. You should also test a transfer to verify successful configuration.

Architectural overview

HSTS server is deployed using a number of different pods. In some cases the pods contain a number of containers.

The information in this diagram is explained in the following text.

Datagram Protocol (UDP) is a communications standard that is primarily used to provide low-latency and loss-tolerant connections between internet-based applications.

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is a transport layer protocol that smooths out the process of sending packets from source to destination. As a connection-oriented protocol, it creates the link between computing units in a network before any communication takes place between them.

FASP

The Fast Adaptive Secure Protocol (FASP) is the high-speed, secure data transfer protocol on which HSTS is based. FASP has built-in security mechanisms that do not affect the transmission speed.

ascp
The transfer engine that is used on both the server and client side to transmit data using the FASP protocol. An incoming connection is routed to ascp for transfers.
asperanoded
The daemon that serves up the Node API, which is the HSTS primary REST API. The API has multiple functions, including authorizing transfers, transfer initiation, transfer status, file system browsing, setting permissions, and file system operations.
aejd
Aspera Event Journal daemon reports events, which are primarily transfer-related events. The ascp pod writes the events to Redis during a transfer. The events are read from the Redis database, for example, when HSTS is configured for Event Streams integration.
Proxy Pods
Proxy pods are used to expose the ascp and asperanoded pods to the outside world. The TCP proxy is used to proxy the SSH connection. The HTTP-proxy pod is used to proxy the asperanoded pod.
Other Pods
  • engine aggregates cluster utilization based on aejd reporting of events that are recorded in Kafka or Redis.
  • tcp-scheduler is the Loadbalancer for TCP traffic. It uses the engine service to get live information about cluster utilization.
  • http-scheduler is the Loadbalancer for HTTP traffic. It uses the engine service to get live information about cluster utilization.