Accessing Files on Redundant Device from Active through SSH

From the active device, you can access files stored on the redundant device's flash memory, through SSH (or SFTP). Once accessed, your SSH client can download files to your PC (e.g., debug file, locally stored CDR or debug recording files, and Configuration Package file) or rename files (e.g., locally stored CDR file). This eliminates the need to perform an HA switchover to change the redundant device to active in order to access the device's files.

Access to the redundant device uses a proxy SSH server port on the active device. As this is a secure connection, your SSH client needs to authenticate itself with the device (SSH server). The device performs standard user authentication, where you can configure it to check the user's credentials in the device's Local Users table or with a remote authentication server.

You can only access certain folders (files) through SFTP if you have one of the following management user levels:

Administrator users can access only folders containing the CDRs and SDRs (i.e., /cdr, /cdr-gw, and /sdr).
Security Administrator users can access all folders.
Master users can access all folders.
Monitor users can't access any folder.

Perform the following procedure on the active device.

To access redundant device from active device for file download:
1. Enable SSH (see Configuring CLI over SSH using Public Key Authentication).
2. Open the SSH Settings page (Setup menu > Administration tab > Web & CLI folder > SSH Settings).
3. In the 'Redundant Device Server Port' field (SSHRedundantProxyPort), configure a port for SSH through which the active device accesses the redundant device. This proxy port must be different to the active device's regular SSH server port (configured in the 'Server Port' parameter).

4. Click Apply.
The device may take a long time to prepare the debug file for transfer when it contains much information. Some SFTP clients (for example, WinSCP and FileZilla) have a short default connection timeout and if the file transfer is not started within this timeout, the transfer attempt is aborted. Therefore, it is recommended to configure a longer timeout for your SFTP client application.
For more information on the Configuration Package file, see Downloading and Uploading the Configuration Package File.