Hi
We have several databases that are members of an AOAG running between two MS SQL Server 2014 Ent instances. We wish to add another database but it's 2.5TB in size. This makes the traditional approach, for adding a DB to an AOAG, very difficult in terms of running a full backup and restoring it on the secondary node. We have conducted some tests and bearing in mind the replica is in another datacentre (connected with a 5Gbps link) the backup itself is taking around 55hrs.
I know 2016 has the direct seeding option but I have seen articles saying this shouldn't be used/may not work well with large databases. So we potentially have one option of upgrading to 2016 but have fairly limited time. Are there any views on this approach?
Does anyone know if you can combine, for example mirroring, with AOAG to get the database initially over to the replica node? Or a different approach? Or perhaps a 3rd party tool that may help?
Thanks in advance
Sam