Windows Server 2016 Storage Enhancements

Two planned Windows Server 2016 storage features, Storage Spaces Direct and Storage Replica, will help organizations and hardware manufacturers build software-defined storage solutions on Windows. The features could improve the disaster recovery capabilities of the OS and extend the deployment of Windows software-defined storage to a broader market. These enhancements should require no changes to existing applications, but they may require new hardware, and their exact requirements and limits are unknown.

Storage Spaces Direct

Windows Server 2016 will introduce Storage Spaces Direct, a technology for building large, highly available shared storage volumes using internal commodity drives, which builds on the Storage Spaces feature.

Storage Spaces Background

Storage Spaces, introduced in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8, enables the creation of storage pools, which are groups of commodity drives grouped together and presented as a single volume to Windows and applications. The technology can reduce cost by grouping low-cost commodity drives to create a large volume, as compared to purchasing expensive storage solutions.