What a volume copy is

Volume copy is a way of copying both data in the active file system and data in storage systems from one volume to another. The source and destination volumes must be the same type (traditional or flex).

The vol family of commands manages volumes. A volume is a logical unit of storage, containing a file system image and associated administrative options such as Snapshot schedules. The disk space that a volume occupies (as well as the characteristics of the RAID protection it receives) is provided by an aggregate (see na_aggr(1)).

You can initiate a volume copy with the vol copy start command, which enables you to copy data from one volume to another volume, either on the same or on a different storage system. The result is a restricted volume containing the same data as the source volume at the time you initiated the copy operation.

Benefits of the vol copy command set: Although you can copy data on the storage system using client programs such as cpio or use the Data ONTAP dump and restore commands, the vol copy command set offers the following benefits:

When a vol copy command reads and writes data, Data ONTAP does not traverse directories on the system. Data is copied block for block directly from the disks, which means that Data ONTAP can finish the copying faster than it could with other methods.
Using a vol copy command, Data ONTAP preserves the Snapshot data of the source volume. If, in the future, users might need to use Snapshot copies that were taken before data was copied from one volume to another, you can use a vol copy command for migrating data. For example, if users accidentally delete files and need to recover them, they can do so from the preserved data.

Maximum number of simultaneous volume copies: Volume copy has the same limit of simultaneous copies that SnapMirror replications have. For more information, see “Maximum number of simultaneous replication operations.”

When to copy volumes
You might find copying volumes useful under certain situations.

Parent topic: Volume copy

Related reference

Maximum number of concurrent replication operations