Windows Server 2025 is generally available today, and builds on our mission to deliver a secure, high-performance Windows Server platform designed to meet diverse customer needs. This release will enable you to deploy applications in any environment, whether on-premises, hybrid environments, or in the cloud.
Windows Server 2025
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Advanced multi-layered security
In an age where cybersecurity is paramount (see the Microsoft Digital Defense 2024 report and the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Healthcare Ransomware report), Windows Server 2025 features a suite of security features designed to protect your data and infrastructure. Here are some basic capabilities:
Active Directory (AD): The gold standard for identity and authentication only gets better with new security capabilities to help fortify your environment against evolving threats with greater scalability, improvements in protocols, cryptography, hardening, and new encryption support. File Services Hardening/Server Message Block (SMB): Windows Server 2025 includes SMB over QUIC to enable secure access to file shares over the Internet. SMB Security also adds strict firewall defaults, brute force attack prevention, and protection for man-in-the-middle attacks, relay attacks, and spoofing attacks. Delegated Managed Service Accounts (dMSA): Unlike traditional service accounts, dMSA does not require manual password management because AD takes care of it automatically. Using a dMSA, specific permissions can be delegated to access resources in the domain, reducing security risks and providing better visibility and logs of service account activity.
These advanced security features make Windows Server 2025 a powerful and secure platform for your IT infrastructure that you should start evaluating immediately.
Cloud agility anywhere
Windows Server 2025 offers many advanced hybrid cloud capabilities designed to enhance operational flexibility and connectivity across different environments. Key features include:
Hotpatching is enabled by Azure Arc: Customers that run entirely in the cloud enjoy inherent modern security benefits like automatic software updates, backup, and recovery. We're now bringing some of these capabilities to Windows Server 2025 for on-premises customers through the new Rapid Patch Subscription service, enabled by Azure Arc. With rapid patching, customers will experience fewer reboots and minimal interruption to operations. Hotpatching provides security updates for Azure Arc-enabled Windows Server 2025 Standard or Datacenter operating systems running on physical machines, virtual machines, or on-premises or multi-cloud servers. Hotpatching, currently in preview, will require a monthly subscription. Hot patching remains at no additional cost for virtual machines running Windows Server Datacenter Azure Edition. Easy setup for Azure Arc: Windows Server 2025 brings the powerful capabilities of Azure directly to your data center through Azure Arc. This integration simplifies the onboarding process for hybrid Azure features and enhances operational flexibility, allowing you to more effectively manage and secure your hybrid and multi-cloud environments. SDN Multisite Features: SDN Multisite features provide native L2 and L3 connectivity to seamlessly migrate workloads across different sites, along with unified network policy management. Unified network policy management: This capability allows for centralized management of network policies, making it easier to maintain consistent security and performance standards across your hybrid cloud environment.
These hybrid cloud capabilities make Windows Server 2025 an ideal choice for organizations looking to optimize their IT infrastructure and capture the benefits of on-premises and cloud environments.
Artificial intelligence, performance and scale
Windows Server 2025 is designed to handle the most demanding workloads, including artificial intelligence and machine learning. Here are some basic capabilities:
Hyper-V, AI, and Machine Learning: With built-in support for GPU partitioning and the ability to process large data sets across distributed environments, Windows Server 2025 provides a high-performance platform for both traditional applications and advanced AI workloads with live migration and high availability . NVMe storage performance: Windows Server 2025 delivers up to 60% storage IOP performance compared to Windows Server 2022 on similar systems. (Based on 4K randread using Diskpsd 2.2 with Kioxia CM7 SSd) Storage Spaces Live flexibility and storage: Windows Server has supported a wide range of storage solutions such as on-premises, NAS and SAN for decades and continues to this day. Windows Server 2025 delivers even more storage innovations with native ReFS deduplication and compression, thin-sharded storage, and storage replica compression now available in all versions of Windows Server 2025. Hyper-V performance and scale: Windows Server 2025 delivers dramatic improvements The performance and scalability come from Azure. Maximum Windows Server 2025 Hyper-V virtual machine: Maximum memory per VM: 240 TB* — (previously ~10x) Maximum virtual processors per virtual machine: 2048 VPs* — (previously ~8.5x)
*Requires 2nd generation virtual machines
Windows Server 2025 brings major advancements across the board in Hyper-V, GPU integration, live storage (Software Defined Storage), SDN, and clustering. These improvements make Windows Server 2025 an excellent choice for organizations looking for a virtualization solution and for organizations looking to take advantage of artificial intelligence and machine learning while maintaining high performance and scalability.
System Center 2025 is now available
With the introduction of System Center 2025 in conjunction with Windows Server 2025, widespread management of Windows Server is available immediately. This allows organizations to get the most out of new Windows Server features. Designed to enhance speed, performance, and security, this release is set to improve how organizations optimize their infrastructure and software-defined virtual data centers. We encourage you to visit the System Center 2025 post to learn more.
Microsoft Ignite 2024
We look forward to meeting you in person and sharing these and other features of Windows Server 2025 in our sessions and at our booth at Microsoft Ignite in Chicago, November 19-21. For those of you who cannot attend, several sessions, including a Windows Server breakout session titled Windows Server 2025: New Ways to Gain Cloud Speed ​​and Security, will be available for online viewing.
We're also excited to offer new features to customers in current Windows Server releases such as 2016, 2019, 2022, as well as 2025. Windows Server Software Assurance customers or active subscription customers have access to Azure management tools such as Azure Update Manager, Azure Policy Guest Configuration, and Azure Policy Guest Configuration. Disaster recovery, change and inventory tracking, and more, with access to many features at no additional cost**. Stay tuned to Microsoft Ignite as we feature more demos and information on how to access these new offerings.
Additional resources for Windows Server
Notes
**Note: Compute and storage may incur additional fees.
