Artifactory Federation Service (RTFS)

To meet the growing needs of customers, JFrog released the standalone Artifactory Federation Service (RTFS) in Q3 2024 for customers in SaaS environments. Support for self-managed environments was introduced in January 2025. The service ensures the timely synchronization of huge volumes of artifact metadata between customer sites running Federated repositories.

Benefits

The Artifactory Federation Service offers multiple benefits:

Scalability: The service is designed from the ground up to grow as the needs of customers grow.
Resource separation: Artifact metadata is replicated continuously but separately from the binary content. This enables fast synchronization of the metadata, which is replicated rapidly in bulk, while the binary content is brought asynchronously using a separate mechanism based on workers. Separate mechanisms also enable checksum validation on binaries before they are synchronized, which reduces traffic costs by preventing the copying of files that already exist on the target.
Federation monitoring: A new dashboard enables administrators to quickly understand the health of their organization's repository Federations at a glance. For more information, see Federation Dashboard.
Prioritization: Users can assign high priority to a limited number of repositories to ensure they receive priority access to system resources. For more information, see Set Federation Priority.
Automatic Federation recovery: The service features an auto-healing mechanism that can identify synchronization problems between members due to an exhausted queue (a queue that has exceeded the maximum number of attempts to send metadata events to other members), reset the failed events, and retry synchronization. This capability is particularly useful if a Full Sync operation is interrupted by a restart of one of the Artifactory instances that host a Federation member.

Legacy Federation vs. RTFS

The following table compares legacy Federation with RTFS.

Capability	Legacy Federation	RTFS
Architecture	Embedded in JFrog Artifactory	Standalone microservice
New features (for example, Unidirectional Sync)	Not available	Exclusively developed for RTFS
SaaS default	No	Yes, default for all JFrog SaaS customers
Enterprise validation	Original service	Validated by leading enterprise customers with improved stability and performance
Monitoring dashboard	Basic status view	Full Federation dashboard
Auto-healing	Requires 7.71.1+	Built-in
Database requirement	Uses Artifactory database	Requires PostgreSQL (for RTFS service only)

Database Requirements

The RTFS service explicitly requires a PostgreSQL database connection. However, this requirement applies only to the RTFS service itself. Your main Artifactory installation remains completely unaffected and continues to support all currently available databases.

If your Artifactory already uses PostgreSQL, you can use the same database instance.
If your Artifactory uses a different database, you only need to introduce a separate PostgreSQL instance for the RTFS service. There is no need to migrate your entire Artifactory installation.

Certificate Support

The Artifactory Federation Service supports self-signed certificates and certificates signed by a custom Certificate Authority (CA) starting from Artifactory version 7.133.4. If you're running an earlier version, upgrade to a supported version to use self-signed or custom CA certificates with RTFS.

Frequently Asked Questions

This section provides answers to frequently asked questions about the Artifactory Federation Service.

plusFAQs

Q: How is RTFS different from legacy Federation?

A: RTFS is a standalone microservice with resource separation, auto-healing, and a full monitoring dashboard, while legacy Federation is embedded in Artifactory with only a basic status view. See Legacy Federation vs. RTFS for the full comparison.

Q: Does RTFS require a separate database?

A: Yes, RTFS requires a PostgreSQL database connection, but this requirement applies only to the RTFS service itself. Your main Artifactory installation is unaffected.

Q: What happens if a Full Sync is interrupted?

A: RTFS's auto-healing mechanism can reset failed events and retry synchronization, which is particularly useful when a Full Sync is interrupted by an Artifactory instance restart.

Q: Can I use self-signed certificates with RTFS?

A: Yes. Starting from Artifactory version 7.133.4, RTFS supports self-signed certificates and certificates signed by a custom Certificate Authority.

Q: When did RTFS become available for self-managed environments?

A: RTFS launched for SaaS environments in Q3 2024, and support for self-managed environments was introduced in January 2025.