Adobe Experience Platform SFTP/FTP retry behavior monitoring
When exporting files from Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) to SFTP or FTP destinations, network interruptions result in incomplete or corrupted files on the destination server. This article explains how Adobe Experience Platform handles retries, file naming behavior, export status reporting, and monitoring options.
Description description
Environment
- Product: Adobe Experience Platform (AEP)
- Constraints: Applies to file-based SFTP/FTP destinations
Issue/Symptoms
- Incomplete or corrupted files appear on the FTP or SFTP server after an export.
- Retries occur automatically, sometimes several hours after the initial failure.
- Retried files use the same name as the original; suffixes such as attempt2 or V2 are not standard product behavior.
- The AEP UI does not display detailed logs of individual retry attempts within a successful dataflow run.
Resolution resolution
To solve the issue, try the following steps:
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Use the built-in Adobe Experience Platform retry mechanism, which automatically retries failed SFTP or FTP exports with increasing backoff delays until the process completes or fails.
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Allow sufficient time for retries, because Adobe Experience Platform can complete retries several hours after the initial export attempt.
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Expect the same file name for all retry attempts because Adobe Experience Platform does not support versioned or suffixed file names during retries.
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Check export results in the AEP UI under Destinations
>Dataflow runs:- A run shows Success only when both data preparation and file copy finish without errors.
- If a transfer stops mid-run, AEP either retries the run or marks it as failed.
- Any unrecovered failure appears as Failed in the dataflow run history.
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During retry periods, the UI does not show a retry-specific status; it displays only processing, failed, or success.
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The standard UI does not show how many retries or intermediate failures occurred within a successful run.
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Enable the Destination Flow Run Failure alert if you need notifications when failures occur.
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Use manifest files for atomic delivery, since AEP creates them only after all data files are written successfully; AEP does not support temporary file extensions or rename-on-complete behavior.
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For best reliability, use SFTP and make sure the server supports enough concurrent connections, at least one per scheduled export or roughly 30% of peak simultaneous exports.
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Confirm resolution by reviewing subsequent runs in Destinations
>Dataflow runs and verifying the expected final status.