topic Re: cifs share migration from EMC VNX to NetApp in ONTAP Discussions

cifs share migration from EMC VNX to NetApp

FelixZhou — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 12:05:57 GMT

we will need to migrate a cifs file system with multiple shares from EMC VNX to NetApp, can someone share your experience?

1). move data from share to share or from file system to volume? which way is better?

2). is that possible to maintain all share permissions?

3). what is the best utility can we use for moving data?

thanks and have a good weekend !

Re: cifs share migration from EMC VNX to NetApp

Ontapforrum — Sat, 21 Dec 2019 22:06:20 GMT

Hi,

Your best bet is 'robocopy'. I have used robocopy once upon a time 😉 to migrate data between EMC and NetApp and it worked very well, it's been a while and have never had another opportunity as I landed in all NetApp environment since then fortuantely.

There are many discussions on the Internet that I am sure you would have looked up by now but 'robocopy' tops it as far as CIFS is concerend.

Few articles worth reading:

How to move files to a NetApp CIFS server using Robocopy to retain Windows ACLs:
https://kb.netapp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/1029827

(I have used the commands shown in this article and it works well, it preserves the file/dir attributes & permission)
https://niktips.wordpress.com/2018/03/08/scripted-cifs-shares-migration/

https://community.netapp.com/t5/Network-Storage-Protocols-Discussions/Easy-and-Reliable-way-to-Migrate-SAN-and-NAS-from-EMC-VNX-to-Netapp-C-mode/td-p/109997

You may give it a try NetApp's tool:[This is an old tool and have never used personally, so can't vouch for it]
https://mysupport.netapp.com/NOW/download/tools/sscopy/

EMCOPY: I believe its a native tool for EMC and it also works, though I have never used it.

Example command: [Shows basic switches, you can experiemtn with 'multithreading']
robocopy \\192.168.0.x\share \\192.168.0.x\share /E /ZB /DCOPY:T /COPYALL /R:1 /W:1 /LOG:C:\robocopy.log

1) move data from share to share or from file system to volume? which way is better? = Both works

2) is that possible to maintain all share permissions? = Yes

3) what is the best utility can we use for moving data? = Robocoy

Try it out with few shares and make a call.

Thanks!

Re: cifs share migration from EMC VNX to NetApp

jcolonfzenpr — Sun, 22 Dec 2019 11:59:48 GMT

NetApp offer xcp for this kind of migrations. I used it to migrate 50TB from emc isilon to ontap 9.6 a work great. It also preserve ACL information.

https://xcp.netapp.com/

Best,

Re: cifs share migration from EMC VNX to NetApp

paul_stejskal — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 23:49:37 GMT

Agreed. Robocopy is still single threaded. XCP is multithreaded and works very well for this purpose.

Re: cifs share migration from EMC VNX to NetApp

Ontapforrum — Tue, 24 Dec 2019 09:44:19 GMT

Bydefault, it runs single threaded but there is /MT switch there.

Robocopy and multithreading: How fast is it?
https://andys-tech.blog/2018/04/robocopy-and-multithreading-how-fast-is-it/