Ideally, we would simply pull them across the network (a long evening's work!) dumping them into one qtree on the NetApp. The second step would be to redistribute them into their new qtrees and, for us, conceptually straightforward because the homedirectory names can be pattern-matched into corresponding qtrees. In UNIX-speak, the equivalent of: mv qtree_tmp/<...>/dir_pattern_1 qtree_a mv qtree_tmp/<...>/dir_pattern_2 qtree_b (about five commands, one per qtree).
As the other poster stated, I would recommend running a script which combined everything into one step. I also recommend using rsync. You can rsync the data live right now or a few days before the migration. Then when the actual cutover takes place, lock the home dirs (no more writes) and rerun the rsync command. It will scan over the files and only copy those things that have changed.
On the NetApp/WAFL is such a move across qtrees a simple relink or is it a data-copying operation? Is there a NetApp command to move/rename a directory-tree? If so, what?
I don't know if this is supported by Netapp, but it works. At your filer prompt, run "java netapp.cmds.jsh". Then type help. It mentions normal Unix commands like ls, cat, rm, cp, mv. I believe this mv would be faster than mv from the Unix client. When you're done, type "exit" and it will put you back at the filer prompt.
/Brian/