Download the Evaluation: Windows Server 2012 R2

Download the Evaluation: Windows Server 2012 R2

Live Migration improvements. Compression during live migration will reduce the time to move the VMs to another server , this feature is the default option on Windows 2012 R2  and it will be a good option when we have some bandwidth limitations. Obviously this feature introduces more workload to the CPU in the servers.

Shared VHDX. In this release Hyper-V will be guest clustering with shared VHDX using commodity storage, additionally it would be resize even when the VM is still running.

Hyper-V replica. This version introduces a third datacenter in the replication scenarios where we can change the replica frequency.

Export and Clone of VMs. Now it is possible to clone or export a running VM from System Center Virtual Machine Manager R2.

Dynamic Memory support for Linux. It has the ability to dynamically expand the amount of memory available to a running VM.

Gen2 VMs. Windows 2012 R2 introduces this feature removing all the legacy, BIOS-based functionality of a traditional VM, some of the benefits will be reduce the size of the VMs and eliminate some of the overhead of legacy BIOS-based. Of course traditional  Gen1 will be available too.

Automated storage tiering. Now you can configure SSD drives to be prioritized for application where the latency is very important or use slower disks for applications with less workload.

Storage Quality of Services QoS. Enable consistent SLA delivery and will be configurable while the VM is running.