As you may know, the public beta for Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 is now available for download. We've already explained why SP1 is important to the enterprise; now let's take a closer look at what's actually in the update.

In this Windows Server News Q&A with Microsoft senior technical product manager Justin Graham, editor Brendan Cournoyer gets the skinny on SP1's new features, starting with Dynamic Memory. He asks what Windows administrators can expect; here's part of Graham's response:

We're really after improving the memory management for the Hyper-V platform. We went out and talked to customers and asked them what they were after from a memory perspective for their hypervisor. The overwhelming thing that came back was that they were looking for increased density -- that was number one -- and a path to more virtual machines [VMs] on a host. But they also wanted to do that with linear and predictable scalability, as well as with a feature that's designed for production use.

This is a really revealing look at what's new and exciting about SP1, so if you're planning to get the beta later this month, give it a read.

In the meantime, check out our previous coverage of Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and its spiffy virtualization features.