Storage Foundation provides the SmartMove utility to optimize move and copy operations. The SmartMove utility leverages the knowledge that Veritas File System (VxFS) has of the Veritas Volume Manager (VxVM) storage. VxFS lets VxVM know which blocks have data. When VxVM performs an operation that copies or moves data, SmartMove enables the operation to only copy or move the blocks used by the file system. This capability improves performance for synchronization, mirroring, and copying operations because it reduces the number of blocks that are copied. SmartMove only works with VxFS file systems that are mounted on VxVM volumes. If a file system is not mounted, the utility has no visibility into the usage on the file system.

SmartMove is not used for volumes that have instant snapshots.

The SmartMove operation also can be used to migrate data from thick storage to thin-provisioned storage. Because SmartMove copies only blocks that are in use by the file system, the migration process results in a thin-provisioned LUN.