Windows Server 'R2' Details Begin to Leak

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(old news) Thursday, November 11, 2004

Microsoft still has yet to release a wide-scale beta of its next Windows Server release, code-named "R2." But according to sources, the product is well on its way to being finalized, with packaging, licensing and support details already hammered out.

Microsoft officials said last month that R2 will ship in the latter half of 2005. To make that date, the company cut some features, such as network-access protection and file sharing over HTTP, from the product, officials acknowledged.

But if it's due relatively soon, why has R2 yet to go to beta?

R2 is expected to include some new features and functionality, but it won't be much more than Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) plus some of the myriad Windows Server 2003 service packs that the company has shipped since April 2003 (the date it shipped Windows Server 2003), according to Microsoft partners.

The ultimate goal with R2, like other "interim" Windows releases, is to allow customers to incorporate it into their environments with relatively little testing, said partner sources who requested anonymity.

R2 will be such a relatively minor upgrade, sources said, that Microsoft is planning to swap it out for Windows Server 2003 when it ships. The company isn't planning to charge its volume-license customers for the product, and it won't require new client-access licenses (CALs) for R2. (Users will be able to use the Windows Server 2003 ones they already have.)

Microsoft officials are not ready to talk specifics about R2, a company spokeswoman said.

This isn't to say Microsoft isn't adding some new capabilities to R2 – or that customers should expect the R2 upgrade to "just work" with all their existing applications. As Windows XP Service Pack 2 customers found, not all their applications, including those from Microsoft itself, worked seamlessly with the latest Windows update.

Microsoft has a big job on its hands to coordinate the myriad moving parts that will underlie R2, acknowledged Michael Cherry, a senior analyst with Directions on Microsoft, a research firm based in Kirkland, Wash.

"Microsoft has a lot on its plate," said Cherry. "They need to finish and ship Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, Windows Update Services (WUS), 64-bit editions for the AMD and Intel x64 processors, Windows Server 2003 R2, the Windows editions for high performance computing, and then betas for Longhorn, the WinFX and other Longhorn technologies for XP, and Longhorn Server. They also have to work on the storage products.

"Although some of these products logically build on others, Microsoft has to figure out the best order to complete the work, and the best way to manage any dependencies," Cherry continued. "Oh, and let's keep in mind they will have to address ongoing bug and vulnerability fixes, and release hot-fixes and service packs for products in mainstream support. My expectation is that we will see an effort to get Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 out, then WUS, and then Windows Server 2003 R2, but if any one of these first three slips badly, it could impact the rest of the releases."

Microsoft officials have talked publicly a couple of times since this spring about which of the more than dozen feature packs that it plans to fold into R2. Among the ones that are definites, according to partners:

Active Directory Federation Services (a k a "Trustbridge")

Rights Management Server

SharePoint Portal Services Version 2

File Server Migration Toolkit

Network File System (NFS) support

Services for Unix (some, if not all features)

Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM)

'Corral' Storage Resource Management

Of these, the changes on tap for R2 will likely be in the areas of systems management, identity management ("Trustbridge") and storage management ("Corral"), partners said. Microsoft is still expecting branch management to be one of the biggest potential markets for the R2 release, partners said.

Source