Packing the Scalable Networking Pack into Service Pack 2

There's a lot of great stuff to look forward to in the upcoming Service Pack 2 (SP2) release for Windows Server 2003. Among the long list of updates (see Ward's posting to the Windows Server Division's blog for the complete list) are two personal fav's: the Scalable Networking Pack and the IPsec Simple Policy Update.

Having the Scalable Networking Pack included in SP2 means it "officially" becomes part of the new base-line of Windows Server 2003. This, in turn, means more and more new servers will come with these bits to match the great list of IHVs and OEMs that are shipping supporting hardware. Speaking of Scalable Networking partners, we just added two more over the last few weeks: Acer and Neterion. You can get the full details at the Scalable Networking partner's page off of our TechNet site.

Any how, this is great news for the long term adoption of these critical features. Especially as multi-gigabit networking grows in prevalence and you start looking to adopt it more broadly in your datacenters. 

But wait, there's more! The Simple Policy Update (for IPsec) is a preview of what we're doing to make IPsec a more scalable, deployable, manageable and "no brainer" decision in the next releases of Windows. Take a look at my AuthIP posting for more details there.