The MERS® VPN connection has been around a long time. I don't know when MERS® added the VPN as an option to communicate with MERS® but I know when our company first developed eRAMP in 2002 MERS® offered a dial up connection. As most MERS® members are away the old VPN connection with MERS® is going away. The good news is eRAMP has its own SFTP client solution so there should be very little impact to eRAMP and our users. To confirm the process, we will conduct tests between eRAMP and MERS® SFTP servers as soon as MERS® has their test/training environment available. Once testing has been completed we will email all users with the results.
Looks like MERS® has done a great job getting their SFTP servers ready and working to make this change as easy as possible. Here’s what MERS® has told us in our most resent communications:
“Switching to the direct SFTP connection will be straight-forward, you will need to configure your program that connects to the MERS® System (be it an SFTP client or some other application) to point to a new URL.
There will be no other change to the current process. Your existing SFTP login credentials and folder structure on the SFTP server will not change.
The new DNS name for the MERS® System SFTP server and additional testing instructions will be provided end of October. The direct SFTP connection will allow Members to securely connect to our SFTP server without first establishing a VPN connection and will be available for testing in the MERS® System Integration environment (also known as the Training environment) from November 6–17, 2017.”
Once again, we see no issues moving forward eliminating the MERS® VPN when the time comes. If you have questions please submit a ticket to our support desk. Otherwise we will have more information for you in the first two weeks of November.
Thank you,
eRAMP Support Team