Windows Server 2012 R2

Windows Server 2012 R2 is the server counterpart of Windows 8.1. It was unveiled on 2013-06-03 at TechEd North America, with a preview release on 2013-06-24. A download version on 2013-06-25 was made available.

It replaces Windows Server 2012 and was replaced by Windows Server 2016.

Editions
According to Windows Server 2012 R2 datasheet published on 2013-05-31, there will be three editions of this operating system: Essentials, Standard and Datacenter. As with Windows Server 2012, the Datacenter and Standard editions are feature identical, varying only based on licensing (particularly licensing of Hyper-V VMs). The Essentials edition has the same features as the Datacenter and Standard products, with some restrictions.

Changes
As of preview version,

Automated Tiering: Storage Spaces stores most frequently accessed files on fastest physical media

Deduplication for VHD: Reduces the storage space for VHD files with largely similar contents by storing the similar contents only once.

Windows PowerShell v4, which now includes a Desired State Configuration (DSC) feature.

Web Application Reverse Proxy.

Integrated Office365 support.

The return of the Windows Start Button.