Microsoft recently released a new Service pack for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. It was released on 16th for TECHNET/MSDN subscribers and I was lucky enough to get it downloaded on the same day for evaluation. Now that I’m already on SP1 I would like to share my experience before General Availability which is on 22nd. Apart from updated Hotfixes are no major changes if you apply SP1 on Windows 7, but there are two new features added with SP1 when you apply it on top of Windows Server 2008 R2. My post will be an introduction to these changes which is applicable for Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP1.
First Feature, that has been added is called Dynamic Memory.This feature allows you to pool all memory available on a physical host between virtual machines as required depending on the workload.
Other feature which was introduced is called Remote FX which allows a virtualized Graphical Processing Unit on the server side to deliver rich media and 3D user experience for VDI Solutions. Users will be able to experience Windows Aero desktop environments and also watch videos within a Virtual Machine environment.
Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1/Windows 7 SP1 will be available on Windows Update today (22-02-2011). I will post more on Dynamic Memory as well as Remote FX in my future posts.