We would like to backup a 2 TB sqlserver 2019 DB to another server with minimal downtime. What are the best options?
Thanks
It sounds like you are moving a database from one instance to another with as little interruption as possible, and perhaps without the guidance of an experienced DBA.
Can you define your acceptable downtime limit? Is it days, hours, minutes, seconds?
Do you have budget for hiring an experienced rent-a-DBA to help? (This isn't a sales pitch. I'm not interested. haha)
What level of toleration exists for failure? Meaning, if you have a target date for the migration but run into issues and cannot complete the cut-over before your maintenance window ends, how upsetty-spaghetti will someone be with you?
How "fast and vast" is your backup storage and network IO? Several of the options involve creating a full backup, restoring it to the destination, then doing the same with diff and/or transaction logs right up until the cut-over. If you say "we don't even have enough storage to take a full backup", that definitely steers the conversation down another path.
Do you just want to make a backup or move the database or do a restore?
you can make the backup at any time, as long as the backup drive is not that of the database. I would say stop work in the afternoon or evening, make the backup, then restore on the other machine and then you can work again. so there is no data loss... and yes there are other options, but it is unclear what you want to do here 