Remote BLOB Storage and FILESTREAM in SQL Server 2008

Question

I'm a SharePoint develop and I have just learned about remote blob feature in SQL Server 2008 that makes storing BLOBs more effecient.

My English's not good, somebody can tell me the difference between terms: FILESTREAM and Remote BLOB Storage. Is it work well in farm environment with SAN device.

Thanks so much.

Answer 1

RBS with the Filestream Provider (which uses the underlying Filestream feature of SQL Server) will work very well in a farm environment with a SAN device.

There's a very good whitepaper here which goes in to more detail.

Also, from my blog posting RBS & Filestream Feature Comparison:

FILESTREAM and RBS are complementary approaches for storage and management of BLOBs.

• FILESTREAM provides a storage option that allows storage, efficient streaming and integrated management of large BLOBs in a SQL database by utilizing the underlying NTFS file system for BLOB storage/streaming. It offers fully transactional access and compatible operations as varbinary(max).
• RBS is a set of standardized APIs that allow storage/retrieval of BLOBs outside of your main SQL database where a dedicated BLOB store is desirable for various reasons. This uses a provider model for plugging in any dedicated BLOB store that implements these RBS APIs.
• RBS has an out-of-the-box RBS FILESTREAM provider that allows a deployment to use a SQL Database (local or remote) as a dedicated BLOB store. This provider utilizes the FILESTREAM as the BLOB storage mechanism and ties the two technologies together.