Techradar posted a preview on Windows Server 2012 R2

Microsoft has suggested one of the most important features in Windows 8.1 is how many new features it's gained in just eight months. Actually that's far more appropriate to Windows Server 2012 R2, which has new features aimed not only at large enterprises but at smaller companies.R2 has functions for managing 'bring your own device', remote access and storage that will appeal to smaller businesses, especially as the can be managed through the simplified Server Manager dashboard. It's possible to add Windows Server Essentials ? the small business version of Windows server ? as a role, to get the simplified remote access and client backup tools, even if you have more than the 25 users to which Server Essentials has previously been limited.PowerShell 4 also adds new tools, including Desired State Configuration. It can prevent configuration drift ? so you can keep the server the way you want it ? by specifying the configuration as a state, rather than just a set of commands to run.Installing the Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview is straightforward; you need at least a 1.4GHz 64-bit CPU, 512MB of RAM, 32GB of free disk space and a Gigabit Ethernet adapter, but it will happily run as a virtual machine on an existing Windows Server 2008 R2 or 2012 system.

  Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview