Windows Server

by
Jim Gaynor

by
Jim Gaynor

Jim leads the Directions on Microsoft editorial team and has been writing about technology since the early 1990s. Most recently... more

Windows Server is Microsoft’s OS for deployment on server hardware and for use within VMs. It’s a prerequisite for most Microsoft server applications such as SQL Server, Exchange Server, and SharePoint Server, and it continues to provide on-premises infrastructure for identity management (Active Directory [AD]), virtualization (Hyper-V), storage and file services, and other tasks. Windows Server 2025, released in Nov. 2024, is the latest version of Windows Server.

See “Windows Client” for the Windows Client OS and other client OS versions.

Product: Windows Server

Licensing: Windows Server

Near Term (2026–2027)

Hotpatching for Windows Server 2025 dropped its per-core subscription fee effective May 15, 2026, and it’s now available at no additional cost. Hotpatching still requires Azure Arc enrollment.

Virtualization Mode for Windows Admin Center, Microsoft’s free Web-based management utility, is in a second public preview. Virtualization Mode extends Windows Admin Center from managing a single server or single cluster to managing an entire on-premises virtualization fabric, which can include hundreds or thousands of VMs across many clusters.