Windows Server 8 Preview

Deduplication is a new feature of Windows Server 8 which reduces space consumption by detecting duplicate content and storing it once only. The savings can be substantial, particularly in cases such as storing gold images of virtual machines, which contain a large amount of duplicate content. Although performance is optimised, there is still a performance penalty, so deduplication is most suitable for content that is infrequently accessed. Other storage enhancements in Server 8 include support for 64TB NTFS volumes, and a new version of CHKDSK which performs most of its work online, so that faults are pre-identified and fixed quickly when the drive is offline.