What's new with Windows Server 2003 R2

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A few years ago Microsoft announced its Windows Server Roadmap to try and provide consistency and predictability for Windows customers to be able to plan their OS purchasing and adoption strategies.

Essentially the roadmap states that a new Windows operating system would appear approximately every four years, with an interim release appearing in a cycle every two years.

Windows Server 2003 R2 (WS2003 is the first milestone in this strategy and has taken the core operating system beyond Windows Server 2003 service pack one, which was a quantum leap in itself.

In two years time, if everything goes to plan, we will see a major operating system refresh in Longhorn – and similarly a Longhorn “R2.” should be available 2 years later.

The beauty of WS03 R2’s is that the core OS has not been changed in WS03 R2 beyond what’s present in Windows 2003 service pack one (SP1), e.g. Kernel, networking stack, Active Directory, drivers.

This mean existing Windows Server 2003 customers with SP1 can take advantage of the new functionality very quickly.

The major arenas that WS03 R2 focuses on improving are in the areas of Branch Office Infrastructure solutions, Identity Management, Storage Management, Web Application Platform and Virtualisation.

Branch Office

In a branch office scenario, companies typically have either dedicated branch servers, or remote servers designed to service a specific branch or set of branches.

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