S/4HANA to Bank SFTP via CPI – AL11 vs Client SFTP

[MohitSharma6]

Hello Experts,

We are integrating S/4HANA Private Cloud with a Bank SFTP through SAP CPI (PGP encryption handled in CPI). An ABAP program in S/4HANA will generate and place the output file either on AL11 or a client SFTP location. Considering two options:
1️. S/4 → AL11 → CPI → Bank SFTP (BASIS mounts SFTP on AL11)
2. S/4 → Client SFTP → CPI → Bank SFTP

Which approach is SAP-recommended / best practice? Does SAP provides any free SFTP server for such use? If we mount external client SFTP to AL11, does it makes any sense as eventually we will be picking the file from SFTP server.

Thanks,

Mohit

[RameshVaranganti]

Which approach is SAP-recommended / best practice?

• Approach 1 beacuse, this will be placed the file into mounted server.  Instead of looking , how CPI pick the file, Check the best approach to place the file from SAP S4.  AL11 is simply a transaction to view application server directories that are defined in the SAP system.

Does SAP provides any free SFTP server for such use?

• Technically NO. 

If we mount external client SFTP to AL11, does it makes any sense as eventually we will be picking the file from SFTP server.  

• AL11 folders physically reside on the SAP application server’s filesystem. You can not directly access this either create some program in SAP S4 to call CPI endpoint and push the content to CPI. To access the directories , mount SFTP and access directories.