Since it sounds like you have a desktop PC as your server, you probably don’t have an IPMI/BMC/iDRAC or anything that’ll allow you to access the system before the OS boots.
you could consider something like the pivkvm
or you might be able to setup GRUB to output to a serial console, and get a couple of USB-RS232 adapters and a NULL-MODEM cable, that way you can select an OS from a terminal emulator. on your workstation.
You are comparing apples to bean and cheese burritos here.
FTP/FTPS/SFTP aren’t even close to the same thing as a fully integrated cloud solution. Sure you can use both things to simply transfer files between several devices, but that’s not
whythe only reason most people use a cloud solution.It is conceivable that there could be a cloud solution which might incorporate the use of SFTP/FTPS as an underlying protocol, but I think the go to is HTTPS for myriad reasons.
NOTE: if you are regularly using one of the FTP-like tools to sync files as part of your regular workflow, you should look into
rsync