Windows Server 2012, due Later This Year

Microsoft announced yesterday that Windows Server "8" will be named Windows Server 2012 when it is released later this year. Dubbed as a "cloud-optimized" operating system, Windows Server 2012 is currently in the beta testing stage and an additional Release Candidate version is expected around June.

Windows Server 2012 will include Microsoft's new Resilient File System (ReFS) to handle large volumes, resiliency to corruption, and shared storage pools across machines. ReFS will only be available inside Windows Server 2012 initially, but Microsoft has plans to test it within the server edition and make it available to Windows 8 client users at a later date. Microsoft has also previously promised that the majority of applications that currently run on Windows Server 2008 and R2 "should work" on Windows Server 2012.