We had a glitch using this procedure in an upgrade last weekend (copying from an old filer running 5.3.6R2 to a new one running 6.1R1).

We did the level-0 Thursday night, with a level-1 during a Saturday a.m. downtime. The level-0's all claimed to complete without error, but a few of the incrementals based on those level-0's failed to restore, complaining that the full-restore had not completed & thus an incremental restore could not proceed.

Excuse me if I ask something probably obvious, but was this done with the Java version of NDMPcopy '-level i' or '-level 0' (and than '-level 1', and so on...)?

Anyway, I'd say go ahead but make sure you see both "DUMP IS DONE" _and_ "RESTORE IS DONE" on all of your copies, or do them over before proceeding to the next incremental.

Thanks for the tip. I guess this would require constant attendance during the whole operation.

A tool like rsync on a fast client or two can help a lot.

In the light of all the potential problems, this definitely seems like a good idea, especially before the final volume switch.

As a side note, does anyone know of native (i.e. not Java) UnixWare 7 or Win NT 4 binaries of NDMPcopy and rsync?

Robert