5 Shadow Migration

A common task for administrators is to move data from one location to another. In the most abstract sense, this problem encompasses a large number of use cases, from replicating data between servers to keeping user data on laptops in synchronization with servers. There are many external tools available to do this, but Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance has two integrated solutions for migrating data that addresses the most common use cases. The first, replication, is intended for replicating data between one or more appliances, and is covered separately; see Remote Replication. The second, shadow migration, is described in this section.

Shadow migration is a process for migrating data from external NAS sources with the intent of replacing or decommissioning the original once the migration is complete. This is most often used when introducing a new appliance into an existing environment in order to take over file sharing duties of another server, but a number of other novel uses are possible.

To use shadow migration, see the following sections:

• Understanding Shadow Migration

• Creating a Shadow Filesystem

• Managing Background Migration

• Handling Migration Errors

• Monitoring Migration Progress

• Canceling Migration

• Snapshotting Shadow File Systems

• Backing Up Shadow File Systems

• Replicating Shadow File Systems

• Migrating Local File Systems

• Using Shadow Migration Analytics

• Testing Potential Shadow Migration using the CLI

• Migrating Data from an Active NFS Server using the CLI