Microsoft Releases Windows Server 2012 Essentials Candidate

Microsoft is offering the release candidate of Windows Server 2012 Essentials targeted at small businesses for download.

Previously called Windows Small Business Server Essentials, it addresses environments with up to 25 users and a maximum of 50 computers as the primary server software.

Essentials will be released amongthree other versions of Windows Server 2012 for $425 in retail. Microsoft also offers the Datacenter edition ($4,809), Standard ($882) and the Foundation release (only available via OEM agreements). The release candidate is available as a 560.9 MB download an requires users to run a system with at least 160 GB free disk space, 2 GB memory, as well as a 1.3 GHz multi-core processor.

According to Microsoft, "almost all Windows Server 2012 applications should run on this release and differs from Windows Server 2012 "primarily in that several of the roles and features of Windows Server are automatically installed and configured according to best practices for a small business environment."

If applications do not run, users may have to enable specific roles or features, Microsoft said.

Wolfgang Gruener is a contributor to Tom's IT Pro. He is currently principal analyst at Ndicio Research, a market analysis firm that focuses on cloud computing and disruptive technologies, and maintains the conceivablytech.comblog. An 18-year veteran in IT journalism and market research, he previously published TG Daily and was managing editor of Tom's Hardware news, which he grew from a link collection in the early 2000s into one of the most comprehensive and trusted technology news sources.

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