NetApp File Copy
It always comes up, how can I copy single files, or large areas directly from the NetApp console? Generally the answer comes back, you can’t, use RoboCopy or rsync or another file migration tool. However there are definitely ways of copying files around directly from the filer itself, and often this is the most efficient way of doing it! However, these aren’t the most intuitive or well documented commands.
There may be other methods, and if you have something you have used in the past or you know of, please feel free to share! Not all methods are suitable for all tasks, but each has it’s own individual uses.
ndmpcopy
This is often overlooked as a file / folder copy command, and is often just used to migrate entire volumes around. In fact it can be used to copy individual folders or filers around, and even better can be used to copy data to other filers! Make sure ndmp is enabled first (ndmpd on). The syntax is quite simple…
ndmpcopy /vol/vol_source_name/folder/file /vol/vol_dest_name/file
Just to break this down, we are choosing to copy a filer from “/vol/vol_source_name/folder” and we want to copy it into “/vol/vol_dest_name”. This isn’t too restrictive, we don’t have to keep the same path, and we can even copy things about in the same volume (such as copying things into QTrees if you need). You can copy things from an entire volume, to a single QTree, down to single folders way down in the directory tree. The only real restriction is you cannot use wildcards, and you cannot select multiple files to copy.
If you want to copy files from one filer to another, we simply extend this syntax…
ndmpcopy -sa <user>:<pass> -da <user>:<pass> source_filer:/vol/vol_source_name/folder/file destination_filer:/vol/vol_dest_name/file
