SQL Server 2008 -- Automatic Recovery of Data Pages

SQL Server 2008 enables the principal and mirror machines to transparently recover from 823/824 types of data page errors by requesting a fresh copy of the suspect page from the mirroring partner transparently to end users and applications.

SQL Server 2008 -- Enhanced Database Mirroring

SQL Server 2008 builds on SQL Server 2005 by providing a more reliable platform that has enhanced database mirroring, including automatic page repair, improved performance, and enhanced supportability.

SQL Server 2008 -- Auditing

Create and manage auditing via DDL, while simplifying compliance by providing more comprehensive data auditing. This enables organizations to answer common questions, such as, "What data was retrieved?"

SQL Server 2008 -- Partitioned Table Parallelism

Partitions enable organizations to manage large growing tables more effectively by transparently breaking them into manageable blocks of data. SQL Server 2008 builds on the advances of partitioning in SQL Server 2005 by improving the performance on large partitioned tables.

SQL Server 2008 -- Backup Compression

Keeping disk-based backups online is expensive and time-consuming. With SQL Server 2008 backup compression, less storage is required to keep backups online, and backups run significantly faster since less disk I/O is required.

SQL Server 2008 -- Performance Data Collection

Performance tuning and troubleshooting are time-consuming tasks for the administrator. To provide actionable performance insights to administrators, SQL Server 2008 includes more extensive performance data collection, a new centralized data repository for storing performance data, and new tools for reporting and monitoring.

SQL Server 2008 -- Data Compression

Enable data to be stored more effectively, and reduce the storage requirements for your data. Data compression also provides significant performance improvements for large I/O bound workloads, like data warehousing.