Windows Server Overview

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Microsoft’s current major release of Windows Server is Windows Server 2012, which was generally available for volume licensing customers in Sept. 2012, and preinstalled on servers from OEMs in Oct. 2012. A stand-alone version of Microsoft’s hypervisor hardware virtualization technology, Hyper-V Server 2012, was released at the same time.

To ensure Windows 8 and Windows RT remain competitive for rapidly evolving devices, such as tablets, Microsoft may begin deploying minor updates to the Window Client OS and Windows RT on an annualized basis; however, such interim releases of Windows 8 and Windows RT will probably only update high-level components such as the WinRT APIs and user interface, not core components shared with Windows Server and Windows Phone 8, because the groups managing those other Windows products might not be willing or able to support annualized releases. Therefore, Windows Server will likely continue to use its traditional release cycle of releasing an R2 update, approximately 18 months to two years after the release of a major version, such as Windows Server 2012.