+-- Jessica Fernandez jasf@lanl.gov once said: | The vol copy command is only useful when copying from volume to volume on | the same filer, correct?
It can be used from one filer to another. I have used this in the past to migrate data between filers we were updrading like this (this was NFS, I can't speak to CIFS since I don't do Windows):
1. Re-export old filer directories read only. 2. start a vol copy from old filer to new filer. 3. Export new filer volume rw. 4. Update client mount points to new filer, unmount and remount client partitions (it was easier to reboot in our case) 5. when no clients are still accessing old filer, you're done.
I found the vol copy went pretty fast. I can't recall exactly, but I think we migrated about 100GB in a couple of hours (like 3ish). This was over a GB link, however. I believe this is a very efficient way of copying data if the volume is pretty full because it's doing a low-level xfer. I'm not sure if it's as efficient if the volume is sparsely populated. Someone on this list will know better than I.
Good luck.
Oz