Lots of big changes in the latest versions of these two products. I’ve been running Windows Server 2008 R2 RC with Hyper-V on my main laptop for a couple of months now and am completely impressed.

 

Here are the top features (but there are a ton more) from the Windows Server Division Weblog:

 

  • Hyper-V and Live Migration – still the big stars. R2’s Hyper-V enables a complete server virtualization solution available out-of-the-box. Live Migration allows server administrators to migrate VMs between physical machines with no perceived downtime for current server connections and work streams. That means a more dynamic datacenter and more agility in meeting new business needs For more information on Hyper-V in R2, check out today’s in-depth post on the Virtualization Team blog.
  • File Classification Infrastructure – FCI lets you manage your data based on its characteristics, including things like file type, user credentials and even content. Based on this kind of criteria, FCI can assign data different access restrictions, store it in different locations or simply push it into an entirely customized lifecycle scheme – all done automatically via policy. For me, this is one of the most exciting new features in R2.
  • Active Directory and Pervasive PowerShell – 240 new PowerShell cmdlets and several management consoles (including a new Active Directory interface) have been built on top of PowerShell. Active Directory has also been enhanced with the Active Directory Recycle Bin as well as AD Group Policy objects that give desktop administrators deeper capabilities when it comes to managing Windows 7 clients.
  • IIS 7.5 – The latest edition of Internet Information Server also sports updated management tools as well as application serving capabilities that now including support for PHP and .NET on Server Core installations.
  • Server Scalability – Not only is R2 Microsoft’s first 64-bit-only operating system, it also supports up to 256 logical processors in a single server as well as all the latest CPU technologies. And, R2 has support for advanced storage technologies, including SAN management and solid state hardware.

And there’s going to be some really nice integration between Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7:

  • DirectAccess, for example, provides secure, always-on access to corporate networks no matter from what network a client might be connecting. Better yet, it provides a two-way relationship allowing desktop admins to manage clients the same way whether they’re local or remote.
  • BranchCache allows users in remote offices to cache corpnet data locally, providing a better work experience for remote workers while simultaneously lowering expensive WAN bandwidth costs.
  • Remote Desktop and Applications – Windows Server 2008’s Terminal Services has now evolved into R2’s Remote Desktop Services, and it integrates so tightly with Windows 7 that administrators will be able to roll out virtualized applications and even entire desktop environments without users being able to tell that these tools aren’t running locally. It’s fast and can even be managed via policy. Very cool stuff.

 

Finally, on the Microsoft Virtualization Team Blog they’ve got a much longer post with more details on Hyper-V 2008 R2 including this awesome news:

“In Hyper-V R2, we spent time analyzing and optimizing the code path for dynamically expanding VHDs and found areas where we could significantly improve performance. In some cases we achieved a 15x improvement for dynamically expanding virtual hard disks. No, that’s not a typo. With dynamically expanding VHDs we can achieve up to about ~87% performance of native throughput.  While we were at it, we took another look at the fixed VHD code path and improved it further so that fixed VHD performance is now on par with native performance.”

Lots more on that post, Hyper-V is taking a big leap forward with this release!