Announced to day at the World Wide Partner Conference, Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter Edition (DCE) has undergone some revisions effective from 1st October 2006:

• It will be available through Volume Licensing
• License rights allow an unlimited number of virtualized Windows Server instances, whether that be Windows Server Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter Edition, or a mix of the tree without having to track the number of VMs or pay for additional Windows Server licenses. You simply license the server's processors with Windows Server Datacenter Edition.
• More OEMs will be providing DCE pre-installed on servers with 2 to 64 processors with and without the Datacenter High Availability program.

Cheers,
John.