I’ve been playing around with it and so far I’m impressed. There is a pretty good document for system administrators that has been updated with the SP2 content. The best part: advanced extranet configuration. Before SP2 there was one way to publish the SharePoint to the external users and if anything changed SharePoint complained. The new SP2 release however allows for the following:
Organizations who want to implement extranet deployments for Windows SharePoint Services often use a reverse proxy and load balancers to protect and manage access to the virtual server front ends. This type of advanced extranet configuration could alter the protocol, host header, or port of the request before it reaches the server running Windows SharePoint Services. Several functions within Windows SharePoint Services generate links and e-mail messages based on the protocol, host header, and port of the request as it is received by the server running Windows SharePoint Services. If the protocol, host header, or port were altered, the wrong URL would be returned to the client.
Sold yet? If not, check out the other additions:
* Support for IP-bound virtual servers
* Support for advanced extranet configurations
* Kerberos authentication enabled by default
* Support for Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0
* Support for Microsoft Windows Server 2003 64-bit implementations
For the less coherent, more grammatically correct realtime insight, follow me on Twitter at