Why are you cloning drives over GigE? And why 600GB--that's a lot. I should think most distros could install in under 20GB easily.
Anyways, there are two distinct issues here: - archive format - compression method Both can be solved independently. Some archive formats are: - zip - tar - cpio - rar - shar Some compression formats are: - compress - zip - rar - bzip2 - gzip You might also consider simply doing rsync. Or get fancier: boot the first time with an md raid1, with the two mirrors being the local drive and a drbd of the remote drive set as mostly-write, with the bitmap option enabled. It will sync and track it's progress in the case it doesn't finish the first time the machine is turned on. Once it has finished, you could remove the drbd remote half out of it. This however would copy every block across the network. Or, just use a dedicated remote fs such as NFS. Or, clone the drives on a local machine using faster, native drive interfaces (SATA or a USB3/firewire enclosure) before deploying them--could be up to 3 times faster depending on your drive capabilities. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
