The EqlXcp utility accelerates and offloads file copy operations from a Windows Server to the EqualLogic Array by using SCSI Extended Copy commands.
Scenario when using EqlXcp:
You are moving large files, like .VHDs, from one EqualLogic Volume to another EqualLogic Volume.
The following is an example of my testing of the new EqlXcp command.
- Physical Server running Windows Server 2008
- Drive E: is a 100GB EqualLogic Volume
- Drive F: is a 100GB EqualLogic Volume
- I have a 4GB file named BigFile.zip
- BigFile.zip is on Drive E: and I want to copy this file to Drive F:
Using EqlXcp and the Copy command below: 
When using the Copy command you will see that the 2 NICs for SAN are running around 50% utilization below: 
When using the EqlXcp command, there is NO utilization at all through the 2 NICs for SAN because the EqualLogic Array is physically doing all of the work.
Time it takes to copy a 4GB file from Drive E: to Drive F:
- Using EqlXcp: approx 35 seconds
- Using Copy command approx 2 minutes
Needless to say, if you have a large amount of files to move or large files to move from one EqualLogic Volume to another EqualLogic Volume using Windows Server, EqlXcp is the way to go!
NOTE: For more information on EqlXcp, please refer to Chapter 7 in the HIT 3.4.0 User Guide.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | equallogic, HIT
That’s pretty cool – does it work for copying between groups as well, have you tried it over some sort of WAN connection to see if it optimises there too?
EqlXcp works with Volumes inside the same Group, not across Groups.
Very cool!
Can this be used on Cluster Shared Volumes safely?
I do not believe this will work with CSV’s which is basically a single EqualLogic Volume that multiple Windows Server can access at the same time. This will work from one EqualLogic Volume to another EqualLogic Volume.
I was thinking more in line of copying from one EQL hosted CSV to another EQL hosted CSV.
This would have made a great scenario for Hyper-V/SCVMM rapid provision of VM’s (http://bit.ly/9Ln07u) The template could be cloned quite quickly, saving near 50% of the time of creating a new VM from template.
[...] Copy VHD from one CSV volume to another If you are using Dell Equallogic iSCSI storage and want to copy or move VHD files from one volume to another, the use of the EqlXcp utility might speed things up a bit. This because the Equallogic is tranfering the data internally instead of copying it to the Window server and copy it over to the destination volume. More info at http://marcmalotke.net/2010/06/28/equallogic-hit-3-4-0-eqlxcp-command/ [...]
Copy VHD from one CSV volume to another If you are using Dell Equallogic iSCSI storage and want to copy or move VHD files from one volume to another, the use of the EqlXcp utility might spe..." permalink="http://marcmalotke.net/2010/06/28/equallogic-hit-3-4-0-eqlxcp-command/#comment-127"]Perhaps wishfull thinking, but it would be great if one could get this to work under the following circumstance: A file copied from one VM with EQ iscsi guest attached volume copied over to another VM with EQ iscsi guest attached volume.
[...] the design queues of the HIT/ME to employ features like AutoSnapshot Manager, and an equivalent to eqlxcp (EqualLogic’s offloaded file copy command in Windows). The HIT for Linux helped me [...]
the design queues of the HIT/ME to employ features like AutoSnapshot Manager, and an equivalent to eqlxcp (EqualLogics offloaded file copy command in Windows). The HIT for Linux ..." permalink="http://marcmalotke.net/2010/06/28/equallogic-hit-3-4-0-eqlxcp-command/#comment-837"]