I have been tasked with copying select databases from the production SQL server to the Data Warehouse (at least nightly). However, no matter how I try to copy the data over, I run into an issue. Below is our setup:

• Production Enviroment

  • SQL 2014 Enterprise
  • around 20 TB of data
  • Weekly Full backups, Nightly Diff (minus on night of weekly), every 15 minutes Transaction Logs backup

• Data Warehouse

  • SQL 2016 Enterprise
  • In the same network/datacenter as prod
  • In theory a 10G connection between servers
  • Both in VMware both on same storage device

Here is the options I have found and the reasons it will be troublesome:

• Mirroring – Breaks Full/Diff backups
• Log Shipping – Breaks 15 minute transaction logs
• Restoring from full/diff nightly – Too much data (still a possibility, but MGMT not happy about it)
• Presenting same virtual drive on both servers – Causes issues with vmware/non-standard setup

All I have to do is get the data over, after that its up to our vendor to do the manipulations. Am I overlooking some options? Has anyone else run into this? I am new to DBA, so any help is appreciated.