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Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) Available

Thursday, 06 December 2007 by Michel Roth

Microsoft just announced the general availability of Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 1 (RC1). This is one of the last major (if not the last) public releases of Windows Server 2008 before the release to manufacturing in anticipation of the global release on February 27th, 2008.

There is only one really new feature introduced in this release but it is significant one: Group Policy Preferences. Like I mentioned earlier, Group Policy Preferences will to reader of this website (in the application delivery industry) prove to have a significant impact.

In a nutshell Group Policy Preferences allows you to do everything with Group Policy (and more!) that you used to have to do with a Group Policy or another third party product.

The other new features are the introduction of the Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT). RSAT is the reincarnation of "adminpak.msi", the remote administration tools.

A final change in the product is kind of a superficial one: Windows Server Virtualization has formally been renamed to Hyper-V ( of course with some bug fixes).

Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 1 is a public release so you can download and activate as many copies as you like. You can even use (extend) you Beta 3 keys if you want. Find out a lot more about Windows Server 2008 Release Candidate 1 here. (most of the links don't work but this is nothing new so soon after such an anticipated release - be patient, it will be fixed.)