There's a lot more to talk about specifically in this area; I'll find out more as I spend more time with the developer preview.

Overall, the Windows Server 8 team has attempted to marry the provision of networking services with the right level of storage and management. This manifests itself in the brand new Hyper-V virtual switch that handles network traffic between virtual machines, the external network and the host operating system.

This virtual network switch allows for deep content security and filtering, traffic monitoring and analysis, very deep integration with your existing network infrastructure, support for virtual appliances and, on top of it all, an intuitive management interface. It's also extensible, so your partners can easily build high-quality extensions for capturing traffic, filtering that data and forwarding that traffic elsewhere in the network.

Even in the core networking sense, improvements abound. For example: