pumping storage using DST

As mentioned in the RCLSTG thread, we'll be adding towers of "new" (slightly
less obsolete) disk technology to an ASP and retiring the original disks by
removing them from the ASP and letting the system pump the data to the new
disks.

We're talking about around 800 GB on 116 existing disks - RAID5 configured 8
GB 6713's.  We'll be adding three 5065 cabinets with 135 disk - 17.5 GB
4318's.  The system is the aforementioned 740 12-way brontosaurus with the
older CPU's.

Has anyone undertaken a move of this magnitude?  I have no idea how long the
DST will take to move the data.  I wouldn't be surprised if it took seven
hours or seven days.  If anyone has any similar experiences that I could
scale up or down to use as a basis it would be very helpful.  No one locally
among the CE's and BP's had anything to offer, and the support center
wouldn't go out on a limb.

At the moment we're planning to take on 16 or 24 of the disk in one shot and
try to use it to extrapolate for the rest.  If it doesn't look like we can
finish in our weekend processing time frame we may have to do it in chunks
over the next few weekends.

Much thanks...

-Jim

James P. Damato
Manager - Technical Administration
Dollar General Corporation
<mailto:jdamato@dollargeneral.com>