SP2 Customer Preview for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista now available.

Customer Preview Program (CPP) availability for Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista was announced today over at the Windows Client Springboard TechCenter.  MSDN and TechNet subscribers can download the SP2 CPP now, the rest of you will get access on Thursday. 

I wanted to take a few minutes and share with you all some of the changes that are included in this service pack.  What makes this service pack interesting is that it's a single service pack that applies to both the client and server operating systems (Vista and Windows Server 2008).  How is this done?  Well the code base for Windows Vista is shared with the same code base of Windows Server 2008.  This means a single update can be deployed across your entire infrastructure.  This also helps provide the ability to detect and incompatible driver and warn users of loss of functionality during installation or even use that detection to block the installation of this service pack.

On the server side there are three main features:

• Improved power savings over the RTM release of Windows Server 2008
• Integration of Hyper-V into Windows Server 2008.  SP2 includes the Hyper-V RTM Code.
• All previously released hotfixes and security updates are rolled into SP2.

For Windows Vista IT Pros will see improvements in:

• Emerging Hardware Support such as the ability to record data on Blu-Ray media, Bluetooth 2.1 feature pack as well as support for the new VIA 64-Bit CPU.
• Improvements in performance including Windows Search 4 that enhances indexing performance and integrating Windows Search into Group Policy.
• A new Wireless Feature Pack and fixes for issues where Wi-Fi Connections were lost after resuming a PC from Sleep.
• A really cool service pack clean-up tool that restores hard disk space by deleting the previous versions of the files serviced by Windows Vista SP2.
• Of course this service pack includes all previously released updates, hotfixes, and patches since the release of Vista Service Pack 1.

You do need to be aware that you must have Windows Vista Service Pack 1 installed (or Windows Server 2008) in order to get Service Pack 2 installed.  I reccomend pulling down this service pack and get your testing started on your lab machines. 
For more information on Windows Vista SP2 take a look at the Notable Changes in Windows Server 2008 SP2 Beta and Vista SP2 Beta post on TechNet.  Of course for all of your Windows Vista needs head on over to Springboard.