Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2 can be downloaded now. There are no new revolutionary features like in SP1. In particular, there is no kernel change this time. Most of the new important features like WDS (Windows Deployment Services) or MMC 3.0 were already available as separate downloads before.

So, from a system administrator’s point of view, this might be good news because that means deploying Windows Server SP2 won’t be as problematic as with SP1. We’ll install it as soon as possible on our 25 Windows Server 2003 systems. I always like to keep my servers up-to-date, not only for security reasons (we use WSUS to patch our servers), but because new server applications usually only can be installed if you have the latest service pack.

I installed the SP today on a test server, and so far I didn’t encounter any problem. But somehow, I still can’t get used to the fact that one has to reboot the system after installing a service pack. I don’t know much about system programming, but installing updates which leave the kernel untouched shouldn’t be such a big deal.

If you want to know about the new features you can check out Microsoft’s Top 10 Reasons to Install Windows Server 2003 SP2, the new list of all updates can be found here. And here are the download links for Windows Server 2003 SP2: