Considerations when transferring files to several destinations
Overview
Learn how Connect handles failed transfers in channels with several destinations.
Considerations for file transfers to multiple destinations
When setting up a channel, you can configure Connect to send a single input file to multiple destinations.
For example, you have set up a channel to send a file to three different FTP destinations using Multiple destinations in the channel setup. All is fine as long as Connect can reach the remote hosts. However, if one of the destinations fails to respond so that Connect cannot deliver the file (let's say that Destination 2 fails), Connect will start over and attempt transferring the file to all destinations over again. Therefore, a connection failure can result in several duplicate files in Destination 1 depending on how long it takes before Destination 2 becomes available again.
This behavior is a consequence of Connect's design and can be overcome by slightly altering the workflow, as described below.
Re-routing the workflow to a temporary local storage
To overcome this challenge described above, we advise first transferring the files from the input to separate local destinations, for example using a local drive or a local network share that is not prone to become unavailable. That will produce a number of folders with identical content which can be distributed in Connect using a single-destination channel. Granted, this does involve some extra configuration on the server but will yield a more predictable workflow where the problem of duplicates is effectively avoided.