Storage Features in Server 2012 R2

Software-Defined Storage Appliances

• Synchronization: Work Folders and DFS-R
• Failover Clustering with Hyper-V
• Storage Spaces with SSD tiering and caching
• New Storage Management APIs
• End to end storage management with SCVMM
• Simple Setup and Configuration (OOBE)
• Protocol Improvements: SMB 3.0 and iSCSI Target

File Server Features

• SMB Transparent Failover – Continuous availability
• SMB Scale-Out – Active/active clusters with auto-rebalancing
• SMB Multichannel – Network fault tolerance and throughput
• SMB Direct (SMB over RDMA) – Low latency, low CPU utilization
• SMB Encryption – Security in flight, without IPSec or PKI
• Directory Leasing – Coherent caching of file and folder metadata
• VSS for SMB File Shares – Application-consistent backup/restore
• SMB PowerShell and VMM Support – Manage and automate

Cluster Shared Volumes in Windows Server 2012 R2
Enabling the private cloud

• Access to storage from any node despite physical storage connectivity
• Common namespace that is consistent across all servers
• Resilient and Reliable

Hybrid storage pools & tiered storage

• SSDs and HDDs used as different tiers.
• Windows automatically tracks data temperature and moves them at sub-file level.
• Write-back cache improves performance for real-world workloads.
• Only hot regions of a file (VHD, database, etc.) need to move to SSDs, the cold regions can
  reside on HDDs.
• Ability to pin files to different tiers

Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 Editions
This server comes in 2 OS Editions (Workgroup and Standard)
For more information and support on Server 2012, contact us.