Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials RTM’d

Having already announced that it signed-off on Windows Home Server 2011, formerly codenamed Vail, Microsoft now reveals that Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials has also been released to manufacturing.

Of course, this should not come as a surprise, especially since the two operating systems are essentially joined at the hip.

As it’s usually the case with Windows platforms, the RTM milestone means that the software giant is now shipping Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials to original equipment manufacturers.

It will be OEMs that build Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials server solutions and offered them to customers worldwide, according to Joel Garcia, Product Manager Windows Storage Server.

“This exciting milestone means OEM partners can now use Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials (WSS Essentials) to build NAS appliances that are ideally suited to help small business owners keep important data automatically backed up, protected, organized and accessible from virtually anywhere,” Garcia stated.

“Active Directory join capability enables WSS Essentials to easily integrate into existing infrastructure and networks.”

According to the Redmond company, WSS Essentials will only be offered to a select number of OEMs.

However, at the same time, the software giant is prepared to offer the RTM bits of Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials to MSDN subscribers. A trial version of the operating system will also be launched.

Garcia promised that both the trial and the MSDN downloads of Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials will go live in early April 2011.

“We expect to start seeing NAS storage appliances running Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials in the next few months. Further information will be released about supporting OEM’s as they unfold their release strategy,” Garcia added.

Just as it is the case with Windows Home Server 2011, Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials comes in no less than 19 languages, including Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan), Chinese (Hong Kong), Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.