Updated RBS Packages are available as part of the SQL Server 2008 R2 August CTP release. This includes the new default FILESTREAM RBS provider along with many other enhancements and bugfixes.

This provider is the first officially supported RBS Provider released by Microsoft and begins to bridge the gap between RBS and Filestream, allowing applications to code against the RBS API and use Filestream as the blob store. This is the default provider for RBS and will enable fast developer startup when investigating the SQL / RBS stack.

In addition to the new provider, several features were added to the core RBS client libraries. These include asynchronous provider requests, deferred deletion of collections, maintainer optimizations and support for provider specific consistency checks.

Administrators and developers can look forward to significant performance enhancements when these are made available in future CTP releases.