Announcing AWS Transfer Family web apps for fully managed Amazon S3 file transfers

Today I would like to introduce you to AWS Transfer Family web apps, the newest AWS Transfer Family resource. You can create a fully managed, no-code web app that allows authenticated users to list, upload, download, copy, and delete files in specific Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) buckets. Non-developer, line-of-business users inside and outside of your organization can easily exchange file data without the need for desktop clients, scripts, faded instructions on sticky notes, or local IT help.

As the web apps administrator, you get full control over authentication, access, and permissions, and can customize the web app with a page title and a favicon. Here is the web app that I created while writing this blog post:

I can click files to download them, click folders to open them, and click columns to sort. The vertical ellipses menu provides additional options:

Each web app supports uploading and downloading of files up to 160 GiB in size, and uses multipart uploads for large files. Files are transferred across HTTPS connections protected by TLS, with automatic retries and a CRC32 end-to-end integrity check.

All about Transfer Family web apps
I will show you how to create your own web app in just a minute. But first, let's take a look at some of the essential features and benefits…

Security - Transfer Family web apps use AWS IAM Identity Center, allowing you to use your existing SAML or OIDC identity provider or the built-in Identity Store. Either way, you can use S3 Access Grants to exercise full, fine-grained control over the users and groups that are allowed to see, download, delete, and upload files and to create directories. Your organization can also benefit from AWS Transfer Family's compliance with SOC, PCI DSS, FedRAMP, HIPAA, and other programs.

Customization - You can customize each Transfer Family web app with a page title and a favicon. You can also put a Amazon CloudFront distribution in front of the web app and host it at a custom domain name, with HTTPS access and a public certificate.

AWS Ecosystem - Transfer Family web apps are hosted on AWS and as such are scalable and highly available. All files are stored in designated S3 buckets, with eleven nines (99.999999999%) of durability. You can take advantage of S3 features including S3 Versioning, S3 server access logging, S3 Event Notifications, and more. You can also use Amazon EventBridge to orchestrate complex post-upload workflows.

Creating a Transfer Family web app
Let's go through the steps to create a Transfer Family web app. Each web app exists in a specific AWS Region, so I open the AWS Transfer Family console, choose the desired Region (us-east-2 for this post), and select Web apps on the left:

Then I click Create web app to proceed:

I connect to my IAM Identity Center if necessary, then create or choose an IAM service role (details) that allows the Transfer Family web app to access S3 and S3 Access Grants:

I add a Name tag and set the maximum number of concurrent web app users, then click Next:

Now I design my web app, setting the page title and the logo (both optional) before clicking Next:

On the next page I review my settings and click Create to move ahead:

And my web app is created and almost ready to use (I still need to set up permissions and users):

I will use the Access endpoint in the CORS policy that I will soon create for the bucket associated with the web app, so I copy and save it.

Setting Permissions and Users
I create an IAM custom trust policy that provides the necessary read and write permissions to the S3 bucket(s) that will be accessible through my web app (details). This policy will be referenced in an S3 Access Grant that I will create in a minute:

Moving right along, I create the initial set of users and groups in IAM Identity Center (I can add more later):

Next, I create an S3 bucket in the same region as the web app and create an S3 Access Grant. Each S3 Access Grant allows a particular IAM Identity Center identity (a user or a group) to access a specific scope (a bucket or a prefixed part of a bucket) for reading and/or writing:

I also need to attach a CORS policy (details) to the bucket so that the web app is allowed to access it from the browser:

The final step is to associate the users with the new web app. I return to the AWS Transfer Family Web apps page, find my app, and click Assign users and groups:

I can add new users to my directory or pick existing ones:

I'll add myself to start:

Once assigned, I can share the Access endpoint (as seen above) with the user and they (me, in this case) can log in to the web app:

The Web app endpoint and the Access endpoint are the same by default. If you set up a CloudFront distribution for your web app, the Access endpoint will reflect the URL of the endpoint.

I have shown you the express path through the setup process. As you probably noticed, there are lots of options to control read and write access at the individual and group level. Be sure to explore and fully understand all of these options before you set up your production web app!

Things to Know
Here are a couple of things to know about S3 Transfer Family web apps:

Regions - Web apps can be created in nine AWS Regions; check out the web app documentation for a current list.

Pricing - Pricing is per web app/hour.

API and CLI - You can create and manage web apps programmatically by using create-web-app, describe-web-app, and other AWS Transfer Family actions.

Storage Browser for S3 - Transfer Family web apps are built using Storage Browser for Amazon S3 and offer the same end-user functionality in a fully managed offering.

Getting Started - You can get started with Transfer Family web apps in the Transfer Family console.

- Jeff;

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