Further Innovations Defined in Windows Server 2012 R2
Software defined networking – Provides new levels of agility and flexibility
- Network virtualization in Windows Server 2012 R2, along with the management capabilities in System Center 2012 R2 provides the flexibility to place any virtual machine on any node regardless of IP address with isolation.
- New in-box gateway in Windows Server 2012 R2 extends virtual networks to provide full connectivity to physical networks as well as access to virtual networks over the internet.
Storage transformation – Delivers breakthrough performance at a fraction of the cost
- The storage tiering feature of Storage Spaces in Windows Server 2012 R2 automatically tiers data across hard disks and solid state drives based on usage to dramatically increase storage performance and cost efficiency.
Java application monitoring – Enables deep application insight into Java applications.
- Provides performance and exception events as well as level alerting within Operations Manager for Java applications.
- Supports Tomcat, Java JDK, and other Java web services frameworks.
- Line-of-code level traceability with performance and exception metrics for .NET and Java application monitoring for more actionable, tool-driven dev-ops collaboration
These coupled with the numerous other additional features already mentioned in Windows Server 2012 R2 are sure to be of interest to IT administrators looking to further enable their organizations. Resources are already available for those who are interested in evaluating the upcoming R2 server line-up and can be found here:
- Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview download
- Try Windows Server 2012 R2 on Windows Azure
- System Center 2012 R2 Preview download
- SQL Server 2014 Community Technology Preview 1 (CTP1) download
- Windows 8.1 Enterprise Preview download