Impressions of Windows Server 2012 R2 RTM

[Cicero]

Seeing Saturday is my day off I wiped the Server 2012 install on my desktop PC and installed 2012 R2 RTM. It installed from a USB flash drive in just over 10 minutes to the Intel SSD drive.

DRIVERS
I am happy to report I’ve encountered no driver issues. The only manual change I had to make was when installing the AMD Catalyst 13.10 Beta driver for my Sapphire HD7700 video card I had to edit the Acceleration.Level setting in the registry to get the Catalyst Control Panel fully functional as is outlined in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=51&t=2217

My Asus D2X soundcard works flawlessly with CarvedInside’s Uni Xonar 1.71-1818 drivers with the C-media control Panel (I prefer it to the default Asus Control Center). The Uni Xonar drivers are here: http://maxedtech.com/

The only other driver I had to tinker with was for the ACPI which had to be installed manually. The old Windows 7 drivers for my ASUS mainboard installed fine.

OS CONFIGURATION
For the initial configuration I used ExpertUser’s scripts that are in his OEM Pack found at:
viewtopic.php?f=63&t=2498
They worked a treat so thanks ExpertUser! 😎
I did have to do some tweaking in the Local Security Policy applet to fine tune things but that was easy.

SOFTWARE
So far I’ve installed the following with no issues at all:
Office 2013
Project 2013
Visio 2013
Foobar2000 – I backed up the configuration files etc. from the old Server 2012 install so it was a breeze to setup (my setup is heavily customised).
UltraEdit
System Center EndPoint Protection (SCEP) – I installed this from the System Center 2012 Configuration ISO and have no issues to report.
Opera 16
Opera Next
Adobe Reader XI
VLC Player (x64)
CCleaner
Intel SSD Toolbox

IMPRESSIONS
Performance wise I cannot say that R2 is actually any faster than 2012. It seems to be a bit more stable running some apps that tended to have minor crashes previously.
As far as the changes to the GUI MS have made they are an improvement but I’m not sure they are must have, not unless the old Windows 8/2012 standard GUI drives you nuts.Also I do like the new navigation tab that has been added to the taskbar properties with its added options.

I must add re the GUI my comments are based on me having a 3 monitor setup. 😉

[Anonymous]

TY for this detailed feedback Cicero.

I run it too on a EVGA SR2 with dual X5650, 48 RAM and 2 FX3800 and I had no issues with drivers except those for the Nvidia Quadro, but that is normal.

I have almost the same applications installed and I did notice that it’s a little faster then 2012 on the same configuration.

I use Start8 so I never use Metro Desktop but I must admit that it got me crazy on 2012 to remove every single application shortcut after installation.

I added Decor8 to it to get Lock Screen customized.

Nothing to say it’s stable and I use it for VM’s and damn is it fast.

N 🙂

[Anonymous]

Thanks Fellers for the feed-back! I intend to install Windows Sever 2012 R2 & Windows 8.1 upgrading from their previous 8 and R1 iterations as well shortly. I’m curious ExpertUser, what kind of VM setup you have; do you use VMWare, Oracle’s or Microsoft virtualization products? I also see you have what appears to be 48Gb of RAM were few Operating Systems can actually make functional use of more then 6GB of sans a RAM Disk, and even 8 virtual sessions aren’t going to use all of that… Are you hosting a multi-user application server? Do you use RAM Disks extensively to get even more performance out of virtualization? Just curious how you use all that RAM…

:geek:

[Anonymous]

TY for your post Hoak.

To answer your question I do have Vmware installed but I also use Parallels Workstation Extreme that is able to allocate hardware like GPU (if you have Multi OS SLI support) and CPU to VM’s so basically run just like real PC’s.

I do suggest though not to upgrade 2012 but make a fresh install.

N 🙂

[Anonymous]

@Cicero wrote:

System Center EndPoint Protection (SCEP) – I installed this from the System Center 2012 Configuration ISO and have no issues to report.

I tried to install this to 2012 R2 Datacenter (unactivated) from the SCEP 2012 and from the 2012 R2 preview, and neither installer would successfully start. Am I missing something?

I also noticed that the Asus AI Suite II for my motherboard would not install. This is unfortunate because it is a useful control and diagnostic tool. But it is also not surprising because the software quality seems poor.

[Anonymous]

@lommy wrote:

I tried to install this to 2012 R2 Datacenter (unactivated) from the SCEP 2012 and from the 2012 R2 preview, and neither installer would successfully start. Am I missing something?

I installed SCEPInstall.exe from the ISO named mu_system_center_2012_configuration_manager_x86_x64_dvd_816412 which I downloaded via my TechNet subscription. Here are the details of the install file I used:

[attachment=0:ch2bxfdv]Capture.PNG[/attachment:ch2bxfdv]

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