Some IT administrators and Small Business Server users have criticized Microsoft for not giving advance notice of the release of SP2 for Windows Server 2003. Others viewed the release as untimely following the weeks of patching Exchange Servers, Outlook clients or various versions of Windows for daylight-saving time.

Susan Bradley, chief technology officer with Tamiyasu, Smith, Horn and Braun, Accountancy Corp., on her blog complained, saying “Microsoft? You gave us admins a heads up before XP sp2 was Microsoft updated out to our boxes ..why can’t you give us a heads up on this? The MSRC blog says “no patches” .. and yes I understand that they don’t consider a Service Pack a “Security patch” but anything that you vaguely hint to on that Advance notice day should be discussed fully on your blog. Right now even the Microsoft Update blog isn’t blogging that SP2 is out. Microsoft…you tell us that’s coming out before you shoot it out on Microsoft update will you?”

But a Microsoft spokesman, told eWEEK that the company “makes every effort to communicate our road map and plans to customers. We’ve discussed SP2 distribution plans in detail on our Web site since November, on the Windows Server blog, at our events and via other channels.

Windows 2003 SP2 can be applied to a wide range of Windows 2003 products, including all versions of Windows 2003, all versions of Windows 2003 R2, Windows 2003 x64 Editions, Windows 2003 for Itanium-Based Systems, Windows 2003 Storage Server R2 Edition, Windows 2003 Compute Cluster Edition, Windows 2003 for Small Business Servers R2 Edition, and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

The update includes several fixes plus a handful of new features such as:

• Scalable Networking Pack tools that help speed up networking intensive tasks
• Windows Deployment Services for easy deployment and remote installation
• Improved IPSec manageability
• Support for version 3.0 of the Microsoft Management Console
• Virtualisation and SQL Server performance enhancements
• Support for the Wi-Fi Protected Access 2 to securely connect to wireless networks

If you need more time to test SP2 and would like to prevent SP2 from installing from Automatic Updates, Microsoft has released a toolkit which will block the delivery of the software through Automatic Updates and Windows Update.

For more information about Windows 2003 SP2, please visit the Microsoft Web site.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 7:21 am under Microsoft, Software, Technology.

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