Microsoft has released to
manufacturing Windows Server 2012 Essentials -- the successor to Windows
Small Business Server company officials announced yesterday.
A downloadable trial
version is available for evaluation purposes as of October 9. The
Essentials product is a hybrid on-premises/cloud server. It will have a 25-user
limit and sell for $425, Microsoft officials have said. Windows Server 2012
Essentials is one of four Windows
Server 2012 flavors, with the other three being
Foundation, Standard and Datacenter.
Among other features, Windows
Server 2012 Essentials offers an on-site backup option with Windows Azure;
cloud-based e-mail and collaboration (either using Office 365 or via a hosted
service provider); and support for Storage Spaces disk-pooling.
Microsoft made the near-final Release Candidate (RC)
test build of Windows Server 2012 Essentials available to testers in
August.
TECH360 Correspondent