New Year, more Windows Server R2

Sorry for the delay in posting (life wasn’t that hectic but I didn’t seem to find the time to post – poor excuse – sorry!!)

Anyway, this year has kicked off and the discussions I seem to be having are mainly around Windows 2003 Server R2 and Virtual Server 2005 R2 – much the same as last year really.  However there still seems to be a number of people (not you reading this I’m sure) who a) don’t know what R2 is all about, and b) don’t understand all the features.  So to clarify R2 releases are a feature release roughly available mid product lifecycle (which is generally 4 years), so every couple of years you should expect a R2 release (the name may change but you get the idea). 
It really surprised me yesterday after speaking the 20-30 Windows Server customers how little was known about Windows Server 2003 R2, a show of hands yielded less than 20% that had heard of it, given that some people don’t raise their hands when asked, probably 75% of the audience hadn’t heard the R2 message.
So what should you know about R2, if I had to say one thing it would be DFS Replication.  Specifically the new technology to understand is RDC (Remote Differential Compression) protocol.  The bandwidth savings are fantastic with this feature and it is designed for the WAN.  The words that describe the DFS replication features are: Compression, Replication, Recoverable Replication, Delta based Replication (top feature), Band Width throttling, Scheduling and Reporting, and all included as standard with Windows Server 2003 R2.

This feed (thanks to Julius for pointing it out) has details on R2, also check out the link to the DFS case studies, for those of you with only a few seconds to spare read the “In their own words” column on the right of the case study page for a quick summary.