Windows Server 2012 R2 is at the heart of the Microsoft Cloud OS and provides a unique server and
datacenter platform that allows you to easily and cost-effectively cloud optimize your business. This articles will provide an overview of what’s new Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 including it’s features, File server features and other Enhancements:
Windows Server 2012 & Windows Storage Server 2012:
Great Storage Improvements with 2012!
- Storage Spaces
- 64-node clusters
- SMB3
- Scale-Out File Server
- 8,000 VMs per Cluster
- Offload Data Transfer
- Dedup
- Hyper-V Replica
- Virtual Fibre Channel
- VM Prioritization
- ReFS
- Cluster-Aware Updating
- iSCSI Target Server
- VM Storage Migration
- VHDX
New Approach to Storage:
Strategic shifts to reducing storage costs with Windows Server 2012 Software-Defined Storage
[text_block icon=’Icomoon/icomoon-file-zip||size:38px’| |color:ffffff||background:1a7dd4′ lightbox=’0′ title=’File Based Storage’ link_icon=’0′ format=’1′]High Performance SMB Protocol for SQL Server and Hyper-V Storage over Ethernet networks[/text_block]
[text_block icon=’Icomoon/icomoon-file-zip||size:38px||color:ffffff||background:1a7dd4′ lightbox=’0′ title=’Storage Spaces’ link_icon=’0′ format=’1′]High Performance SMB Protocol for SQL Server and Hyper-V Storage over Ethernet networks[/text_block]
[text_block icon=’Icomoon/icomoon-storage-2||size:38px||color:ffffff||background:1a7dd4′ lightbox=’0′ title=’Storage Spaces’ link_icon=’0′ format=’1′]Cost-Effective Business Critical Storage[/text_block]
New Storage Features in 2012 R2:
Software-Defined Storage Appliances
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- 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
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Introducing Work Folders
Allow information workers to access their individual data
… that is centrally located on a traditional file server
… from all of their devices
… from wherever they are
… while remaining in compliance with policies
SMB3 – 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
