New Failover Clustering features in R2:
- Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) – A distributed access file system optimized for Hyper-V allowing virtual machines and their disk resources to reside be on any cluster node
- Live Migration – Move virtual machines between different physical machines while keeping them running and maintaining client connections
- PowerShell Support – The scripting language of the future which will gradually replace cluster.exe
- DFS-Replication support – Configure members servers in your replication group to be highly available for uniterrupted and failure resilient replication services
- Remote Desktop / Terminal Services support – Make the Connection Broker highly available ensuring that clients are reconnected to their same session or virtual machine within a server farm
- Network Prioritization – Plan your internal cluster network for efficiency, giving the fastest network the highest priority for internal traffic (heartbeat, CSV & Live Migration traffic)
- Read-Only APIs – This security enhancement allows admins to query the state of the cluster, but not perform any actions, making it ideal for first-level triage who "can look, but not touch"
- ETW logging channels – New Crimson channel makes cluster-wide events easier to manage
- Performance Monitor – Clustering counters allow the user to monitor the cluster and tweak it for optimal performance
- Enhanced Validation – Improvements to the functional test tool with additional tests which execute on production cluster nodes to ensure they are running optimally, with best practices deployed
- Migration – The clustering upgrade path now supports more workloads and configurations and offers detailed information about what will be migrated and any additional steps required by the user
New Network Load Balancing features in R2:
- Extended Affinity – Ensures clients are reconnected to the same node to retain cached information if they are disconnected
- PowerShell Support – The new NLB scripting language which will gradually replace nlb.exe and wlbs.exe
Source : blogs.msdn.com/clustering
