SQLServer2014 new Features

• Memory OLTP: provides memory OLTP functionality built into the core SQL Server database to significantly increase transaction speed and throughput for database applications. Memory OLTP is installed with SQL Server Engine without any additional action, and you do not have to rewrite the database application or refresh the hardware to improve memory performance. With memory OLTP, you can access other rich features in SQL Server while leveraging memory performance.
• Memory Updatable ColumnStore: provides higher compression rates, richer query support, and updates for existing ColumnStore Data Warehouse workloads, giving you faster load times, query performance, concurrency, and lower unit TB prices.
• extend memory to SSDs: use SSDs to seamlessly and transparently integrate solid state storage into SQL Server as an extension of the database buffer pool for greater memory processing and reduced disk IO.
• Enhanced High Availability
  • New AlwaysOn Features: availability groups now support up to 8 secondary replicas that are ready to be read, even in the event of a network failure. Failover cluster instances now support Windows cluster shared volumes, which improves shared storage utilization and failover resiliency.
  • Improved online database operations: includes a single partition for online index rebuilds and a lock priority to manage table partition switching, thus reducing the maintenance downtime impact.
• Encrypted Backup: provides backup encryption support in on-premises deployments and in Microsoft Azure.
• IO Resource Management: resource Pools now support the configuration of minimum and maximum IOPS for each volume for more comprehensive resource isolation control.
• Hybrid Scenario:
  • SQL Server Backup to Azure: manage and automate the backup of SQL Server to Microsoft Azure Storage (from on-premises and Microsoft Azure).
  • Azure Secondary Replicas AlwaysOn: easily add replicas from Microsoft Azure to your on-premises availability group.
  • SQL XI (Xstore integration): supports SQL Server database files (from on-premises and Microsoft Azure) on Microsoft Azure storage blobs.
  • Deployment Wizard: easily deploy a locally deployed SQL Server database to Microsoft Azure.