FILESTREAM data must be stored in FILESTREAM filegroups. A FILESTREAM filegroup is a special filegroup that contains file system directories instead of the files themselves. These file system directories are called data containers. Data containers are the interface between Database Engine storage and file system storage.
When you use FILESTREAM storage, consider the following:
- When a table contains a FILESTREAM column, each row must have a nonnull unique row ID.
- FILESTREAM data containers cannot be nested.
- When you are using failover clustering, the FILESTREAM filegroups must be on shared disk resources.
- FILESTREAM filegroups can be on compressed volumes.