imageI have mentioned before that my favorite features in Windows Server 2012 are related to improvements in the storage stack.  While it might not seem as exciting as some of the many other new features, the number and types of scenarios that storage and networking improvements allow are tremendous.  Best of all, these features ship “in the box” (that is, as part of the product itself), so no third-party tools, utilities, or drivers are required. 

I recently wrote an article for the Microsoft MVP Award Program blog that covers some ways in which IT pros can use these features to implement high-availability and other Enterprise-level features using Windows Server 2012.  Here’s a brief excerpt from the post:

Enter Windows Server 2012: A server product that ships with all of the required ingredients to brew your own highly-available storage environment. In this post, I’ll focus on the storage and high-availability-related features that ship as part of Windows Server 2012. Specifically, I’ll discuss what’s required to build and deploy a fault-tolerant Hyper-V deployment using only in-box features. I’ll start with the configuration basics and then list higher-end features that are available for production environments.

For the complete post, please see Windows Server 2012: Hyper-V High-Availability without a SAN, and feel free to post questions or comments there!