Microsoft updates its Windows Server 2003 R2 Beta

Microsoft updates its Windows Server 2003 R2 Beta

World’s largest software developer Microsoft has launched which should be the last of the beta and release candidates of the Windows Server 2003 R2. The company expects the final of this update to be out by the end of the year. This particular release is the server operating system release candidate and marks the last test release before the final is made available to the public.

Microsoft has based this Windows Server 2003 R2 release candidate 1 on the Windows Server 2003 SP1. The company released the RC0 in the month of August earlier this year. They are bringing something called Active Directory Federation Services to this R2. ADFS is one of the final pieces of Microsoft’s identity management platform and it also represents the company’s first implementation of the WS-Federation protocol it developed with IBM.

The company earlier said that they would be using the R2 as the launching pad for its new licensing for virtualization, which takes effect December 1. This enables the users to run four virtual machines on top of the Enterprise Edition of Windows Server 2003 R2 without any additional licensing costs beyond the base server.

This release is available from the Microsoft website in both x64 and x86 versions.