Migration Plan - Netapp to Netapp and DNS alias

[CHAPLIC123]

Howdy all.

I'm looking at migrating from one set of netapp filers to another one, simple CIFS shares accessed from wintel PCs. There's no relationship between the environments (supported by different people and the filers are in different locations).

My crude migration plan would look like

1) Bulk copy all data from set of filers to another, either using netapp tools or even something like robocopy. setup shares exactly the same.

2) At point of migration, block access to source fileshare and do final delta copy

3) swing DNS alias to point at new box

All fairly standard I would think, and an approach I've done before though not with this tech. The only downside is that obviously the 'unit of migration' is the server reference by the whole DNS alias so in other words

\\server1 will either point at the new box or the old one

I am told that it could be done by  *share level*, i.e. so

\\server1\shareA points to the old filer

\\server1\shareB points to the new filer

And the filer can somehow redirect any client request going the "wrong way". I'm not a netapp expert by any means but I'm extremely dubious about what I'm being told. I've requested clarification, but I figured in the meantime you good chaps might have a view?

[dougsiggins]

You could do something like a snapmirror migrate and a bunch of this is automated:

http://communities.netapp.com/message/4665

[CHAPLIC123]

Thanks Doug

I read that and got quite excited... but the redirect feature only appears relevant to NFS... and we're CIFS only. Could this be why I'm getting odd advise?

[dougsiggins]

I'd suspect a volume level snapmirror along with the migrate function would do this job much quicker than what you proposed above. I am quite sure it will terminate cifs prior to offlining/restricting the volume(s). I believe you'd have no issues then adding the new filer into the domain with the same CIFS domain name. Ofcourse you'd need to remove the old filer. Then add the shares to the new filer as listed on the old filer (take note of them prior to the migrate).

When adding to the domain it should update DNS itself (provided you have AD configured that way). I'd test this idea out and work on any kinks prior to a large migration.

[CHAPLIC123]

Thanks  - I appreciate there's probably a better way to get the data across, I'm not too fussed over that.

What I am concerned about is client experience.

What I'm being told is that using the same \\servername I can have some shares on the old filer and some on the new. I can't see how that can be done.