A Look at Windows Server 2008 R2

Day two of the WinHEC conference was devoted largely to Windows Server 2008 R2, and Andy Patrizio of InternetNews.com took it all in. Expected about two years after the initial release of Windows Server 2008, that would put R2 on tap for a 2010 scheduled arrival.

You can expect support for up to 256 logical cores and features that will make it easier to manage hardware.  On the energy-efficiency front you can expect to see some big gains. Windows Server gained 10 percent in efficiency from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008. Microsoft plans to gain another 10 percent with R2.

Helping that along are features like Core Parking, which puts idle cores into a low-power standby mode, varying the voltage to each chip and deciding which devices to turn on or off.

There is also the new "powercfg" utility that works with the new PowerShell 2.0, Microsoft's two-year-old command-line shell. The new powercfg cmdlet -- a utility that runs on the command line -- offers a detailed analysis of which devices are consuming power on a server and which may not be falling into proper sleep states.

From there, managers can create a power profile to shut down devices or machines when they are idle.