Windows Server 2012 Essentials released to manufacturing, available for evaluation today!

re: Windows Server 2012 Essentials released to manufacturing, available for evaluation today!

KrisB — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 22:49:00 GMT

Does anyone actually know when the official release date for WS2012 Essentials is?

There is that many dates being thrown around both on TechNet and other sites that have now since past and still no actual release other than a 180 day trial. The last date on an Official Blog from the build team stated the 1st November, 2012. It is now 20th November, 2012 and still no release and is not even available from HP/Dell/IBM etc as an RTM version with their server packages.

re: Windows Server 2012 Essentials released to manufacturing, available for evaluation today!

BT — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 07:08:23 GMT

FYI to Clark it can't HOST vms but it certainly can RUN as a virtual machine.

re: Windows Server 2012 Essentials released to manufacturing, available for evaluation today!

Clinton Ho [MSFT] — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 03:39:25 GMT

@ James McCormick - The My Server app for Windows 8 is currently not available in the Windows 8 store yet. We're working on the finishing touches of the app and it will be available soon. Please stay tuned as we get closer to general availability of Windows Server 2012 Essentials.

re: Windows Server 2012 Essentials released to manufacturing, available for evaluation today!

Kevin Beares - MSFT — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 18:25:43 GMT

@Clark, Umm, Not sure where you read that you can run Windows Server 2012 Essentials in a VM, but would love to know where because they were wrong. This product is a Windows Server SKU. So, one of the top suggestions for replicating the On Premise configuration of SBS 2011 is to stand up a Windows Server 2012 Standard and then install Essentials into one VM and then stand up another VM and run Exchange Server in that VM. Granted, at this time, Exchange 2010 has to be run in a VM running Windows Server 2008 R2. Hope this clears it up for you.

Kevin Beares

Senior Community Lead

Windows Server and System Center Group

re: Windows Server 2012 Essentials released to manufacturing, available for evaluation today!

clark — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 17:37:48 GMT

the fact that you can't run it as a VM in hyper-v ... makes it an outdated system, even before the release. Everything must run virtual for us now.

re: Windows Server 2012 Essentials released to manufacturing, available for evaluation today!

MikeyB — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 22:06:11 GMT

To Michael below.........Uhhh, read above, "we have even made it easier than ever before to run Essentials itself in a hosted environment." And exactly what hosted environment would that be, Mr. Azure?

re: Windows Server 2012 Essentials released to manufacturing, available for evaluation today!

James McCormick — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 10:18:44 GMT

I am unable to find MyServer app for Windows 8 yet in the app store and as well as web service API documentation on MSDN.

When are those going to come out?

re: Windows Server 2012 Essentials released to manufacturing, available for evaluation today!

Michael — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 22:23:54 GMT

Are there any plans to make it available as one of the default virtual machine images on azure?

I know of a few small businesses that have no central office with employees working from home and having a server to access shared apps and documents they'd fine useful, but preparing an image and uploading is not that easy for the non-technical.

re: Windows Server 2012 Essentials released to manufacturing, available for evaluation today!

David [MSFT] — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 20:41:25 GMT

@GregT, pricing information is available in the Windows Server 2012 Licensing datasheet, download.microsoft.com/.../WS2012_Licensing-Pricing_Datasheet.pdf, and additional information is available on www.microsoft.com/.../pricing-licensing.aspx.

re: Windows Server 2012 Essentials released to manufacturing, available for evaluation today!

GregT — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 19:33:40 GMT

What price point ? it needs to have a "consumer" version to replace WHS, priced reasonably.