Maximizing Performance with Windows Server 2025 Datacenter
Microsoft has unveiled a new version of its flagship server operating system — Windows Server 2025 Datacenter. This release includes numerous improvements and innovations designed to help organizations maximize the productivity of their IT infrastructure. Let’s explore the key innovations and how they can benefit your business.
Improvements in Active Directory Domain Services
A major enhancement in Windows Server 2025 Datacenter is support for 32k database page sizes in Active Directory. This significantly expands AD limitations, such as the maximum object size and the number of values in multivalued attributes. Additionally, new features have been added for recovering corrupted or deleted AD objects, enhancing system resilience.
Security for sensitive attributes in AD has also been bolstered. Operations involving these attributes are now only permitted over encrypted connections. Support for Kerberos AES SHA256 and SHA384 provides more robust authentication encryption. All these advancements make your AD more productive and secure.
Integration with Azure Arc
Windows Server 2025 is closely integrated with Azure Arc, a platform for managing hybrid infrastructure. Thanks to a built-in wizard, connecting your servers to Azure Arc has become incredibly simple. Integration with Azure Arc opens up numerous new opportunities for your IT team:
- Centralized management of all servers, both physical and virtual, through a single pane in the Azure Portal. You gain complete visibility of your infrastructure and can manage it effectively, regardless of the server location.
- Application of corporate policies and ensuring compliance with security and regulatory requirements on servers in various environments — local data centers, public clouds, and edge devices. Azure Policy and Azure Security Center help implement best practices and promptly identify deviations.
- Rapid deployment of applications and services on managed servers using Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes, and Azure Arc-enabled SQL Server. You can use familiar Azure cloud services to run modern cloud-native applications directly on your servers running Windows Server 2025.
Integration with Azure Arc helps efficiently and securely manage growing hybrid infrastructure from a single point. You can focus on creating business value rather than routine server administration tasks.
SMB Protocol Improvements
The SMB protocol, responsible for network file access, has received significant improvements. Implementing SMB over QUIC allows for fast and secure connections to file resources over the Internet. This is particularly useful for distributed organizations and remote employees.
In addition to SMB over QUIC, administrators have gained more capabilities for fine-tuning and securing SMB access:
- Configuration of alternative ports for incoming SMB connections instead of the standard TCP 445. This allows bypassing blockages on this port by some Internet service providers and enhances security by concealing the fact of SMB usage.
- Enforced encryption for all outgoing SMB connections. All data transmitted over the network will be automatically protected from interception and unauthorized access, which is critical for compliance with security standards such as HIPAA and GDPR.
- Blocking of outdated, insecure NTLM authentication on SMB clients. Instead, robust modern authentication protocols based on Kerberos will be used. This helps counter common hacking techniques such as pass-the-hash attacks.
These measures, along with the new SMB compression, significantly improve the performance and security of network file sharing.
Virtualization and Containers
In the area of virtualization, the main innovation is support for VBS enclaves. This technology allows isolating critical parts of applications in a protected memory enclave using hardware virtualization extensions. Thus, application secrets are protected even from a compromised OS.
The portability of Windows containers between hosts running Windows Server 2025 has been improved. Now, container images can be seamlessly transferred between different environments without modifications. This accelerates the deployment and migration of containerized applications into your infrastructure.
Monitoring and Security
New detailed counters have been added for monitoring the performance of critical subsystems — for Active Directory, SMB, and the domain controller discovery mechanism. Their collection and analysis allow proactive identification and elimination of bottlenecks.
Windows LAPS, a solution for managing local administrator passwords, has received numerous improvements:
- flexible modes for managing local accounts, including automatic creation and rotation;
- detection of system image rollbacks to prevent password desynchronization;
- generation of more user-friendly passwords and passphrases from customizable dictionaries;
- forced termination of remaining processes after password changes.
Credential Guard, an advanced credential protection technology, is now enabled by default on compatible systems. Participation in the Windows Insider program allows for prompt receipt of the latest security updates.
Through integration with Azure Arc, security event logs and telemetry can be centrally collected from all servers for proactive threat detection.
Management Convenience
In addition to technical improvements, Windows Server 2025 will provide administrators with an updated interface in the style of Windows 11. The taskbar, Start menu, File Explorer, and other elements have received a modern design and new features.
Advanced tools such as Windows Terminal and the Winget package manager are included in the OS to increase productivity in command-line work.
Integration of wireless networks and Bluetooth support is now available in Windows Server out of the box, without the need for manual component installation.
Conclusion
Windows Server 2025 Datacenter introduces numerous critical improvements in security, performance, and management convenience. The development of key components such as Active Directory, SMB, virtualization, and containers, combined with the integration of advanced Azure Arc cloud capabilities, will elevate the productivity of your IT infrastructure to a new level.
If you haven’t yet explored the new features of Windows Server 2025, now is an ideal time to test them and assess their potential for modernizing your information system. Leverage the Windows Server 2025 Datacenter to maximize your business productivity.
