Move files from one server directly to another server without writing to PC disk

Question

Forgive me if I word this Poorly.

I'm working with a Linux desktop and several ESXi hosts. Lets name my desktop Desk-1 and the ESXi hosts ESXi-1 and ESXi-2 for simplicity's sake. I'd like to move files from ESXi-1 to ESXi-2. I can use lftp to gain access to each host and upload/download files to/from Desk-1 and Desk-2 without issue. Is there a way to move the files from ESXi-1 directly to ESXi-2 without first writing the files to Desk-1. I'm open to using any Linux based solutions.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Since both servers are running ESXi you could use scp -3 option to transfer from one server to another without the files being stored on the intermediate system. The bandwidth of the intermediate system will still be used though.

Answer 2

If your ftp server supports FXP, ie, Server to Server File Transfers, you could use an FXP compliant ftp client to initiate the server-to-server file transfer. This would let the client tell server A to send a file to server B.

Not too many servers support this, primarily because you have one server process trying to open a direct connection to the other server process, and many servers prevent this for security reasons.

Hope that helps!