Speed up file transfer on CIFS

[fedaynnetapp]

Hi,

We need to trasnfer a lot of data within a CIFS share and we're wondering wheter there is an alternative to the file transfer at a file system level (NTFS). Trying to transfer the data through the Windows Explorer is quite slow and make things really awkward.

Thank you.

[rmharwood]

If this is between two Netapp volumes you can use ndmpcopy on the filer.

Richard

[fedaynnetapp]

Hi,

It's in the same volume.

I'm trying to move data within the same CIFS share.

Thank you.

[stephan_troxler]

Use Robocopy then. It's not faster but for sure more reliable then Explorer and you can schedule the task to off-peak hours.

[fedaynnetapp]

I was using robocopy and beyondcompare, but just wanted to know if there is any other faster method.

Thank you.

[sahil_anand]

ndmp copy would be the best way, you can give it try,

Check on which qtree or volume your cifs share is created:

ssh filer cifs shares

do base level copy as follows : ndmpcopy -l 0 /vol/abc/qtree/abc/xyz /vol/abc/qtreex/abc/

Give read only permission to the directories which you want to move in this case it is xyz inside abc directory.

do final copy as follows, once it is over check permission on both source  and destination and set them accordingly.

ndmpcopy -l 1 /vol/abc/qtree/abc/xyz /vol/abc/qtreex/abc/

Hope this helps.

[fedaynnetapp]

Hi,

What's the difference among the three different levels (0, 1 and 3) of incremental backups?.

Thank you.

[sahil_anand]

Level 0 copy you can do it any time, you can put it as base level copying, when you start base level copy ndmpcopy command create a snapshot in volume and locks the data and copy it to destination over network.

Whereas you can say level 1 and level 2 are incremental copies and can be done sequentially, only data that has chnaged on source since base level copy was done is copied over to destination.

Please keep in mind you can not to level and level 2 copies multiple times where as you can do base level copy anytime you like, and it creates restore_symboltable file at destination which act as base for level 1 and level 2 copy.

Thanks,

Sahil

[fedaynnetapp]

I think the best option would be running a level 0 and later running incrementals with applications such as Richcopy or BeyondCompare.

Thank you.

[vloiseau]

You can also use Richcopy which is multithreaded (you will have to find the right threads value)... It is not supported.

For ndmpcopy I think you can also optimize the transfer by using (if possible) dedicated interfaces if any are free on the source and destination with private IP.

Valery.