Windows 2008 R2 Beta

Microsoft released R2 Beta of Windows 2008 Server in April. The new version

has many enhancements including new versions of Hyper-V, IIS and enhanced

support for Windows 7. Here we take a look at some of the new features present

in it.

Virtualization improvements



Hyper-V was one of the most talked about features of Windows 2008. In R2

too, Hyper-V gets a new version. New version of Hyper-V has support for Live

Migration, which allows movement of VMs between two physical server without any

downtime. Live migration utilizes a new feature in R2 Beta called Cluster Shared

Volumes in failover clustering. According to MS, these CSV volumes allow

multiple nodes in a failover cluster to access same Logical unit number at the

same time.

Terminal Services gets a new name in 2008 R2 Beta -Remote Desktop Services (RDS).

In R2 Beta, RDS RemoteApp provides Presentation virtualization which creates a

virtualized environment in which processing of an application can be isolated

from I/O and graphics, and application can be controlled from another location.

In other virtualization improvements, Hyper-V2.0 now have support for 32

processors and also making a comeback in is the hot addition and removal of

Virtual hard disks from Virtual machines. Also new version of Hyper-V has

support for Second Level Address Translation,TCP Offload and Jumbo Frames.

New configuration editor in IIS7.5 allows users to edit configuration of web application.

IIS



A new version of IIS too is shipped with Windows 2008 R2. New version IIS

7.5 comes with many enhancements which aim to make deployment and management of

Web applications easier.It has a PowerShell snap-in which allows administrators

to script most commonly performed management tasks. Also included are IIS-specific

cmdlets which make adding,deleting and modification of sites and applications

easier.

Another Enhancement is a Configuration Editor for managing web server as well

as web application settings. Also now users can easily access FastCGI and

ASP.NET applications which were earlier hidden. Another addition is Request

filtering module, which provides filtering features that were earlier present in

URLScan3.1.

R2 Beta uses dynamic I/O redirection mechanism in which I/O can be rerouted inside the Failover cluster to provide improved cluster node connectivity.

In addition to this, R2 has a new version of FTP server services which is

integrated with IIS 7.5 administration interface. New FTP server allows users to

define a virtual host name for an FTP site, which means, now you can have

multiple FTP sites on a single IP address.

Management improvements



Now users can boot Windows 2008 R2 directly from a SAN which means you no

longer require local hard disk in every server. This helps in reducing the

overall storage power consumption. R2 Beta can also reduce processor power

consumption by adjusting the ACPI "p-states" of the processors. These "P-states"

can be configured through Active directory Group policy settings. Another new

feature to reduce power consumption is core parking which constantly tracks

workloads processed by every core, and consolidates the workload to a minimum

possible cores and deactivates the inactive cores, thus saving on the

unnecessary power being consumed by the inactive cores. Similarly when suddenly

a workload requires more processing power, it activates the remaining cores.

PowerShell too gets an upgrade in Windows 2008 R2 Beta. The new version

PowerShell 2.0 comes with more than 100 cmdlets. Also shipped is Windows

PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment(ISE) which is a graphical interface

to create and execute scripts.

In 2008 R2, FTP servers can be accessed from within IIS 7.5 manger interface.	In 2008 R2 Beta, new version of powershell 7.0 also has a graphical interface through you can easily edit, create and run scripts.

DirectAccess



To improve remote user experience, Windows 2008 R2 comes with a new solution

called DirectAccess, which is also present in windows 7. This feature when

enabled will automatically create a connection with a company's corporate

network every time a user connects to Internet. This means users will not have

to launch a VPN client and manually connect to their enterprise network, every

time they need to access it. It uses IPSec to authenticate users and encrypt the

communication taking place over the Internet. Also, the directAccess first

authenticates the computer.

BranchCache



BrachCache is designed to improve utilization of WAN links and application
response time at branch offices by caching the most requested content on the

branch office network. This content can be cached on a dedicated BranchCache

server or in smaller networks where a dedicated server cannot be deployed when a

BranchCache sever receives a request for an already requested content, instead

of sending the content again, BranchCahce server will send a set of hash

directions to location of the content on the branch office network.

According to Microsoft, content transferred between clients and cache server

is encrypted. At the moment BranchCache can only work with Windows 2008 R2

server and Windows 7 clients.

Active Directory



Active Directory Administrative center also gets a new look in R2 beta. The

new task oriented interface is based PowerShell cmdlets. Few useful features in

this include a recycle bin for Active directory objects, offline domain join and

feature called Authentication assurance, which helps administraoting in mapping

certificates with security groups.