What is the preferred method of moving directories between filers?

I was wondering what method the toaster community in general preferred. In the past I have used tar from my UNIX admin host, rsync, dump/restore, ndmpcopy, and cp. I have about given up on ndmpcopy because even across GbE, I see better thruput using tar or dump/restore. A couple of the admins I've spoken to swear by rsync, but I have only used it sparingly.

I have a clustered pair of F760s, one filer for a production database and the second for a development database. Originally, both the production and development work was on the first filer, but space for production work began to run low. We are now moving development data off the production filer onto the development filer and we want to minimize the impact to the production filer while moving the data in a timely manner to the development system. The filers are on the same backup GbE LAN, so the network connection between the two is stable and fast.

Any thoughts, opinions, or war stories greatly appreciated.

Geoff Hardin geoff.hardin@dalsemi.com Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.