New storage features for Windows Server 2012

Anil Desai, a Windows Server expert, will describe how Microsoft's new products can automate storage, stability, performance, and the efficiency of data center enhancements.

Q: What are the new storage features in Windows Server 2012?

Anil Desai: What Microsoft is doing now is to embed ease-of-use, reliability, and high performance in traditional storage into core products on the Windows Server 2012 platform, so businesses no longer need third-party tools or drivers to use.

Q: Can you delve into the new storage features of Windows Server 2012, and how do you improve data center performance?

Desai: Microsoft is trying to address the challenges of the data center, mainly in their operating systems that locate Windows Server 2012 in the cloud, you can call it a public cloud or a private cloud or something, and the other one is virtualization. Once we use virtualization technology, we can effectively improve the portability of virtual machines, portability, but also make the automation of infrastructure become logical. So, I would also like it to reconfigure storage and related network settings, rather than automatically switching servers quickly between host servers. This is the automation layer.

To achieve these functions, certain types of storage capabilities must be available. Historically, people have invested in Sans, especially in large companies, to invest in iSCSI, Fibre Channel, or Ethernet-type architectures in order to acquire features such as multipath, fast automated transfer, or replication between different sites.

Microsoft has integrated some of these features into Windows Server 2012. For example, the built-in Web interface becomes a central part of the operating system, which means you no longer need a third party driver. There is also a file server feature that can be read and written continuously. This will greatly accelerate the remote memory intervention conversion speed between Enterprise servers. It will also have failover clustering, high-speed available file server capabilities, and support for automatic line backup capabilities. In addition, it also has a multithreaded control function, you can connect multiple adapters to the network switch to ensure that more than one storage queue to run properly, so that users do not appear single point of error. These will be features that can be used in Windows server products.