These "P-states" can be configured through Active directory Group policy settings. Another new feature to reduce power consumption is core parking which constantly tracks workloads processed by every core, and consolidates the workload to a minimum possible cores and deactivates the inactive cores, thus saving on the unnecessary power being consumed by the inactive cores. Similarly when suddenly a workload requires more processing power, it activates the remaining cores.

PowerShell too gets an upgrade in Windows 2008 R2 Beta. The new version PowerShell 2.0 comes with more than 100 cmdlets. Also shipped is Windows PowerShell Integrated Scripting Environment(ISE) which is a graphical interface to create and execute scripts.

In 2008 R2, FTP servers can be accessed from within IIS 7.5 manger interface.	In 2008 R2 Beta, new version of powershell 7.0 also has a graphical interface through you can easily edit, create and run scripts.

DirectAccess
To improve remote user experience, Windows 2008 R2 comes with a new solution called DirectAccess, which is also present in windows 7. This feature when enabled will automatically create a connection with a company's corporate network every time a user connects to Internet. This means users will not have to launch a VPN client and manually connect to their enterprise network, every time they need to access it. It uses IPSec to authenticate users and encrypt the communication taking place over the Internet. Also, the directAccess first authenticates the computer.

BranchCache
BrachCache is designed to improve utilization of WAN links and application response time at branch offices by caching the most requested content on the branch office network. This content can be cached on a dedicated BranchCache server or in smaller networks where a dedicated server cannot be deployed when a BranchCache sever receives a request for an already requested content, instead of sending the content again, BranchCahce server will send a set of hash directions to location of the content on the branch office network.

According to Microsoft, content transferred between clients and cache server is encrypted. At the moment BranchCache can only work with Windows 2008 R2 server and Windows 7 clients.

Active Directory
Active Directory Administrative center also gets a new look in R2 beta. The new task oriented interface is based PowerShell cmdlets. Few useful features in this include a recycle bin for Active directory objects, offline domain join and feature called Authentication assurance, which helps administraoting in mapping certificates with security groups.