Good news. Microsoft just released the Windows 2008 R2 SP1 Release Candidate. See  http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/sp1.aspx for more information. I’m downloading it from here here as I type this blog. You can also get a vhd image. That the RC is here is good news because it indicates they are making good progress and are on schedule. That would be just great as I have some beefy Hyper-V cluster plans with 32 core & 256 GB memory servers on my planning for 2011.

I was already very happy with the quality of SP1 Beta. I hope RC does an even better job and works out some issues. They can’t get this one wrong. I’ve been testing Dynamic Memory for a while now in the lab and I want to start using it it in anger for various scenarios. Microsoft can’t afford to make mistakes like the ones with Exchange 2010 SP1, which seemed to be rushed out of the door, or they’ll get the entire virtual server worlds on their backs and in that arena the fight is hard and no one is showing any mercy. I think that’s why they have announced if for the first quarter of 2011, it gives them time do do all quality assurances and get tons of feedback from the early adaptors programs to make sure they catch the mistakes before they go RTM. RemoteFX looks promising for the VDI crowd. That’s something they need to get that going. I for one have always tried to meet customers needs with what’s in the box. RemoteFX will help with that.