Este fin de semana instalé por primera vez Windows Server 2008 RC0 (Release Candidate), disponible para descargar desde hace días, y entre las nuevas características que tiene (de las que ya iré posteando en los siguientes días) se pueden econtrar 18 roles de servidor distintos, entre los que destacan los nuevos:

Active Directory Federation Services: (AD FS) provides Web single-sign-on (SSO) technologies to authenticate a user to multiple Web applications over the life of a single online session.

Active Directory Rights Management Services: (AD RMS) is an information protection technology that works with AD RMS-enabled applications to help safeguard digital information from unauthorized use. Content owners can define who can open, modify, print, forward, or take other actions with the information. (Tecnología disponible desde Office 2003)

Network Policy and Access Services: This allows the provision of local and remote network access to define and enforce policies for network access authentication and authorization.

Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI): This is an industry specification for publishing and locating information about Web services.

Web Server: Windows Server 2008 delivers IIS 7.0, which is a unified Web platform that integrates IIS, ASP.NET, Windows Communication Foundation, and Windows SharePoint Services allowing the sharing of information with users on the Internet, an intranet, or an extranet. (Web Server ya es un rol completo e independiente del rol de Application Server).

Application Server: These provide an integrated environment for deploying and running custom, server-based business applications that are built with the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0. The Application Server role supports applications that use COM+, Message Queuing, Web services, and distributed transactions.

Windows Server Virtualization: Provides software infrastructure and basic management tools in Windows Server 2008 that you can use to create and manage a virtualized server computing environment. (De lo más destacable, virtualización desde el sistema operativo y con optimizaciones para el hardware compatible con esta tecnología, más info).

En este sitio se encuentra la lista completa así como algunos comandos para configurar estos roles mediante el command promt.