SQL Server 2014 Standard

Speed is critical in accessing, analyzing, and molding both internal and external data and Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Standard delivers in performance even in very high-demand environments.

Memory-optimized xVelocity columnstore indexes, a new type of non-clustered indexes, are now a part of Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Standard. This significantly speeds up how much time it takes to do common data warehouse queries.

Microsoft bases xVelocity columnstore indexes on Vertipaq in-memory data compression technology. This technology enables large data sets to be compressed in-memory, which means that queries use less I/O. You can see performance improvement of up to 100 times faster than that of older methods of data retrieval. This means that queries require less I/O.

In addition Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Standard is the first SQL Server version that has update capability for columnstore indexes.

Buffer pool extension has been added to Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Standard. This extension allows integration of a non-volatile RAM (solid state) drive with the Database Engine buffer pool. This provides the benefits of faster I/O throughput, less I/O latency, better read performance, and the creation of a caching environment that works well with lower-priced disks.

Two new setting have been added to the Resource Governor (manages physical I/O of user threads in a resource pool) in Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Standard.

The new settings are MAX_IOPS_PER_VOLUME and MIN_IOPS_PER_VOLUME. These settings are valuable in predicting critical workload physical I/O operations and managing those effectively.

In Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Standard, AlwaysOn Availability Groups are integrated with Windows Azure virtual machines. This is a significant enhancement to the AlwaysOn capability that ensures uptime and disaster recovery via the cloud, no matter what is happening - or has happened - on site (server crash, natural disaster, electrical outage, etc.).

With this new integration, server administrators now can add Windows Azure virtual machines (VMs) as asynchronous Availability Group replicas. Up to eight additional secondary replicas are supported by Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Standard to be available for read workloads even if they are disconnected from the primary replica.

Database backup are now fully integrated with Azure, allowing database backups and restores to be done directly from onsite to Azure (backup) and from Azure to onsite (restore). This allows quick disaster recovery and saves organizations extended downtime and lost productivity and revenue.

Additionally, very strong enhancements to server and database security have been included in Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Standard.