Tiered Storage Comes to Windows Server 2012 R2

Tiered storage takes advantage of fast solid-state drives while still allowing less-expensive hard disks to be used for bulk storage. Tiered storage is a feature added in Windows Server 2012 R2. The feature can achieve significant performance gains at lower cost because the OS manages the storage in a way that puts the most commonly used data on the fastest disks. Algorithms that monitor runtime data accesses control the flow of data to faster or slower disks; however, administrators can also assign specific files to disks based on anticipated workloads.

Storage Spaces and Tiered Storage

Storage Spaces is a technology in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 that enables a group of disks to appear as a single disk, which Microsoft refers to as storage virtualization. Storage Spaces can use inexpensive commodity disks grouped together into a storage pool, which the Windows OS presents to users and applications as a single disk with one or more volumes. Storage Spaces also offers several levels of fault tolerance without requiring a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) hardware or third-party storage software. Once created, a storage pool can be moved from any Windows Server 2012 or 2012 R2 system to any other Windows Server 2012 or 2012 R2 system.