Windows 8 New File System

What is Microsoft workin on? What changes can we expect in Windows 8? I suppose every Windows 8 fan is asking those questions nowadays. There aren’t many news, but there are some hints here and there!

If you compare the performance of filesystems of the major operating systems, you will quickly realize that Windows 7 is not doing very well:

I found this at FlexSense.com, it clearly underlines that Microsoft got a lot of work to do! No wonder that they have 9 teams working on file management and file access ONLY.

Quoted from ZDNET:

And of the 12 working groups created, “eight or nine revolve around management.

Windows 8 Improvements

The core engine of Windows 8 will have security and performance improvements.

For the upcoming version of Windows, new critical features are being worked on including cluster support and support for one way replication. The core engine is also being reworked to provide dramatic performance improvements. We will also soon be starting major improvements for Windows 8 where we will be including innovative features which will revolutionize file access in branch offices.”

Windows 8 New File System Not Confirmed Yet

Microsoft is working on a new file system, an improved DSFR (Distributed File System Replication (DFSR) storage file system), according to ZDNet.

Although Microsoft is hiring people to work on DFSR (the new filesystem) codenamewindows.com reported that the new file system has not been confirmed yet:

But there’s no way to tell yet if Microsoft will start the actual work on the DFSR (Distributed File System Replication ) file replication engine in Windows 8, or if the features will debut into the planning stage

Windows 8 Server Edition Job Postings

Because it’s a bit confusing I want to underline that the following job posting is for Windows 8 Server. The improvements mentioned above are considered for Windows 8.

“In Windows Server 2008 R2 release, the Server UX Test team (under the File Server Management organization) is finalizing the MMC [Microsoft Management Console] based User eXperience (UX)/Interfaces for the File Server Role. Currently the team owns DFS [Distributed File System] Management, Share and Storage Management, FSRM [File Server Resource Manager] & Classification UI, Disk Management, SMFS. For Windows 8, the SSD organization is working on the next version of the file server.

“As the team moved to Windows 8, you will have 2 main responsibilities – (i) put on the customer/design critique hat as we plan our next version file server management experience (i) participating in the architectural design, and development and driving automated testing for managing the next generation file server. Our current automation does not meet the multi-machine paradigm requirement and so you will contribute significantly in the development of test automation to validate setup/configuration of the new server, managing configuration changes, performing diagnostics and reporting using Power Shell, Command line, Object Model, UI.”