Brian:
 
Whether or not it's the best way to do it is based on lots of things.  The nice thing about ndmpcopy is that it's filer->filer (no host in the middle) and
because it's based on dump and restore keeps all of your metadata in tact.  The thing it does not do is maintain snapshots.  For that you'd need
to use 'vol copy' (or Volume SnapMirror if you have a license for that).  NDMPcopy will only copy the data you have specified, so if it's the active
filesystem, it will copy the active filesystem (as it existed when you ran the command, it actually will take a snapshot for the duration of the copy),
while vol copy moves all of the existing snapshots to the destination.  However, vol copy only works on like volume types (trad->trad, flex->flex) and
there's no incremental way to move the data with 'vol copy' (snapmirror can do this) while ndmpcopy can cross volume types if that's needed.
 
But if your shop likes ndmpcopy, that's fine.  The paths are look like this.  I'm assuming you are on the source filer:
 
src_filer> ndmpcopy /vol/srcvol dest_filer:/vol/destvol
 
If you want to do a level 0, then do an incremental later, use the -l flag to specify your level.  I believe the command supports
level 0-2.
 
I hope this answers your question.  Feel free to follow up.

-- Adam Fox
adamfox@netapp.com

 

From: Brian Dunbar [mailto:Brian.Dunbar@plexus.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 4:44 PM
To: toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: ndmpcopy and the newb

Hi,

I'm new to managing Filers - I hope you'll put up with a newb question or two while I get on my feet.  I've not been left entirely on my own here - but there are two unix guys here to mange a lot of servers where before there were four of us .. and the two guys who had done this job previously are the ones who left for greener pastures.  So I've got a mature and reasonably stable infrastructue to work with at least.


My first task is to move a volume from a busy filer to a non-busy filer. 

1. The preferred method (for our shop, I'm told) is to use ndmpcopy

I've got shell access to both filers, they can ping each other. I've got a desination volume created.

ndmpcopy [options] source destination

The source and destination specify a hostname (no problem) and aboslute pathname of the directory to be used for the transfer.  Does this mean the absolute pathname of the source/destination volume?  Or .. something else?  If the former how do I find that?

2. Unless there is a better way to do this?  I can of course mount both volumes via NFS from a 3rd host and simply move then but (from what I've read) ndmpcoy is a better choice.

Brian Dunbar
Plexus
brian.dunbar@plexus.com