Microsoft announced Windows Server 2025 along with some great features! Can we say hotpatching??

Server maintenance gets faster and easier, for a price: Windows Server 2022 can upgrade directly from Windows Update. Microsoft also introduced Hotpatching for all versions of Windows 2025, but this requires Azure Arc to be enabled and have an active subscription.

Active Directory gets some love: A new functional level introduces scalability enhancements such as larger pages and support for over 64 cores. There are also several security improvements to the LDAP and Kerberos and the ability to prioritize replication.

NTLM is on the way out: Windows will now support local Kerberos authentication and provide a Local KDC feature.

Several storage enhancements: Improvements for NVMe, Storage Replica performance enhancements, and ReFS native Dedup and Compression.

Hyper-V gets better GPU support: You can now partition GPU resources, or assign GPUs to an HA pool. Hyper-V is also getting dynamic processor compatibility, allowing you to have multiple processor generations within the same cluster.

File Servers Improvements: Microsoft is rolling out SMB over QUIC for secure access to corporate file shares without a VPN.

These are just the highlights that I picked up after watching the last Ignite session: Introducing Windows Server 2025!