Benjamin Smith wrote: > On 07/25/2014 12:12 PM, Michael Hennebry wrote: >> Is there soome reason that the existing files cannot >> be accessed while they are being copied to the raid? >> > Sheer volume. With something in the range of 100,000,000 small files, it takes a good day or two to rsync. This means that getting a consistent image without significant downtime is impossible. I can handle a few minutes, maybe an hour. Much more than that and I have to explore other options. (In this case, it looks like we'll be biting the bullet and switching to ZFS) Not a big deal. I've done this a number of times, esp when moving a researcher's home directory, or putting in a larger drive. I rsync it all over. *Then*, right after it's done, I have them log off, do a final rsync, and bring it back up. The upshot is that they haven't created thousands of huge files while the big rsync was taking place, while it was still up. If I'm really worried, I do a second rsync after the first huge one, *then* do the "log off and final rsync". mark