OT: Sync files from AFP volume to SMB volume

[stevewood]

I am in the process of moving my file server from an AFP volume hosted on OS X server to an SMB volume hosted on Windows 2008 Server R2. I need to get the data, about 8 TB of it, moved over, but I'm having a difficult time with file/folder names in the transfer. I've tried rsync and robocopy and richcopy, yet all of them seem to fail at some point.

Has anyone done this before, and what tool did you use to get the data to move over without error? If you used rsync, what switches did you use?

Thanks!

Steve

[EQB]

Have you tried Synkron (http://synkron.sourceforge.net/)? It uses an rsync backend, but I've found it to be generally more robust than rsync alone. Plus, it's GUI-based, which is easier on the eyes when sifting through what succeeded and what failed.

[donmontalvo]

I would use Casper Admin to replicate from the AFP share to the SMB share. Casper Admin is intelligent enough to handle the transfer without mangling things. So is the Finder, but not as easy...

Don

[kennyo · Accepted solution]

You have GroupLogic's ExtremeZ-IP and used RSync and the combination seemed to work flawlessly. It's not free, but if your macs will be connecting to a windows file server a lot, it might be worth looking at to make the end user experience smooth. They probably won't even notice any change.

-K

[nsiddiqi]

Hi,
I am facing the same problem stevewood. What solution did you finally use to migrate afp volume to smb volume. Any suggestion will be highly appreciated.
Thank you!

[stevewood]

@nsiddiqi Wow, this is an old thread... :-) If I recall, I wound up using rsync to do the migration. And actually, we installed ExtermeZ-IP on that server, so I wound up having an AFP share to migrate to.

I would recommend not migrating from AFP to SMB unless you've been very strict about naming conventions and folder depths. A colleague of mine migrated their file server to an SMB volume, and while they saw great de-dupe from Win 2012, they had a nightmare of a time with permissions and folder depth issues due to naming conventions.

[scottb]

If you need AFP, or your past naming is filled with "Mac names", the EZ-IP is a lifesaver.
Of course I would still opt for making your naming conventions (as mentioned above) better acclimated for other OS's. At some point, if your naming is good, you'll avoid a mess like this.
We did it when we moved some Xsans out of production in favor of the supported (enterprise teams) Wintel boxes. Apple just left us hanging in the wind with that, so no more Apple servers.
Honestly, the JSS and DP's all seem to work very well that way and I would never go back at this point.

[nsiddiqi]

@stevewood, We are having issues with the permissions too. I was looking into products like unison,synkron or any paid alternatives that offer the same functionality. We are currently using ExtremeZ-IP for AFP share.

I ve spend hours searching for this on internet and haven`t been able to find a worthwhile solution. On the bright side we are only migrating 4 TB so its only half of what you were dealing with :)

What solution did your colleague use for migration from AFP to SMB and for permissions and folder depth issues?

Thank you sir

[stevewood]

That's the point, they moved away from SMB and back to AFP for their file shares using ExtremeZ-IP.

I simply mounted the AFP share from the Windows server on the Mac server and used rsync from the command line to move the files over. Once I did that, I used the Windows share permissions to set the proper permissions on the files/folders.