See our Help Center article on Data Connections here
These instructions will guide you through the steps to create an “SFTP Hosted” Data Connection in Da Vinci that your workstation is able to connect to. For data security purposes, Da Vinci requires an SSH key to be used to authenticate into its Data Connections. This means an SSH key pair must be created on your workstation. Depending on the operating system and tools available on your workstation, the specific steps to do this may vary. General instructions are provided below for use on Windows and Mac OS command prompt.
In the command prompt, navigate to the location you’d like your keypair files to be placed, then use the ssh-keygen command to generate an SSH keypair. We recommend using the following command:
ssh-keygen -t rsa -m PEM -f da_vinci_key
You can replace da_vinci_key with any other name you’d like to give this keypair, but the following steps in these instructions assume that you use the name da_vinci_key. After issuing this command, you will be asked to provide an optional passphrase. This is optional. If a passphrase is provided, then that passphrase will need to be entered when connecting the Da Vinci Data Connection on a later step.
Note that this command will create two files on your workstation;
- One will be named da_vinci_key this is your private key. This should not be shared with anyone. We recommend not touching this key.
- The other will be named da_vinci_key.pub. This is your public key. This key is OK to open, and to share. In an upcoming step, you will be copying the contents of this key into Da Vinci.
Once this is completed, use the following command to output the contents of your public key:
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On Windows: type da_vinci_key.pub |
On Mac OS: cat da_vinci_key.pub |
This should output your public SSH key onto the command line. The public SSH key should begin with ssh-rsa then it should be followed by a long string of characters. The end of the key often contains a comment which often contains the username of the operating system user that is logged in.
Now, the public key will be used to create a Data Connection in Da Vinci
- Navigate to Connections tab
- Click Create Connection in the top right corner
- Name connection and select SFTP Hosted. Note, we recommend you name the connection something like “John Doe’s Workstation” to signify that this Data Connection is specifically for your workstation.
- Paste the public key generated in the previous step into the public key box provided and click create. Provide the name of the key in Da Vinci (da_vinci_key); this may help you recall which private key to use when connecting to this Data Connection in the future. In these screenshots, we named the key “Demo SFTP Connection”).
- Once created, a username will be randomly generated for you that can be paired with the Host (sftp.movableink.com) to establish the SFTP connection
Now that a Data Connection has been established, you can connect to it from your workstation. Depending on the operating system and tools available on your workstation, the specific steps to do this may vary. The general instructions below apply to the command line for both Windows and Mac OS, but tools such as FileZilla provide a graphical interface for SFTP connections.
If using the command line, establish the SFTP connection in your local Terminal with:
sftp -i da_vinci_key [username]@sftp.movableink.com
Replace [username] with the username of the Da Vinci Data Connection. If you provided a passphrase when creating your keypair, you will need to enter the passphrase during this step.
If you’re using the command line, you will see a response of “Connected to sftp.movableink.com” if the connection was successful.