We have a very large SQL Server 2008R2 database (4TB). Recently we were able to compress some of the xml files located within the database. This reduced the actual database size to 1.5TB. But the database still occupies the 4TB.
Our issue is not with the database itself or even its size. It is that we are actively considering are considering 2 additional copies of the same database (full mirror for disaster recovery and a snapshot for reporting purposes) Now here is the rub... thats 12TB of storage. Add into this that our SAN is Raid 10 we are talking about 24TB of storage... did I mention that a TB on the SAN costs in the ballpark of $10000 (US)? So we are taling about a quarter million dollar issue...
So the question arises. While shrinkdb is not advised... we need to consider it due to the massive expense of not dealing with it. If we could reduce the physical size of the db to 2TB (that 500GB (33%) free space for growth), we could cut our SAN costs in half.
Does anyone have a good way to do this without taking down the database for a week and facing massive re-indexing issues?