What’s New, R2? – Introduction

With the general availability release of Windows Server 2012 R2 only 3 weeks away now, I am starting up a series of blog posts to introduce you to some of the new features and technologies you will have access to.  Technically you have access to the new items now just by downloading the Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview bits, and I highly encourage IT Pros to do so and start working through the new stuff. I made a post a few days ago entitled - Get the latest Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview Bits – where I also summarized some of the new features and it gave me the idea of drilling further down into some of the lesser publicized items.

You have probably heard a lot about the new Server Message Block (SMB) networking features, but have you heard much about the new RAS features?  What about the updates to IP Address Management (IPAM)? There are even updates to DNS and DHCP that have not received much airplay. It may be that individually the updates don’t seem like much. But when you start to consider how the pieces all fit together, the scenarios for how we build and manage our “infrastructure” change pretty dramatically. Especially considering that “infrastructure” is rapidly extending well beyond the walls of the buildings where it has typically lived for the last 30 years.

The What’s New, R2? series is going to dive into some of the lesser publicized features to make sure you know what’s new and how it can help benefit what you are doing now and how you implement and scale out tomorrow. There is so much to talk about that I will actually make the first two posts this weekend. I am working on the first post today to go live tomorrow (Sept 28th). I hope to have another post on Sunday, and at least two more throughout next week as time allows.

If you have questions about a new feature, feel free to shoot me an email (link to the left) with what you are looking for and I will try to incorporate it into the series. In the meantime, again, I encourage you to download the Windows 2012 R2 Preview bits so you can follow along for the next few weeks and be better prepared when we reach general availability.

-Cheers!