The latest version of Microsoft's server operating system (OS), Windows Server 2025, is now available on our dedicated and cloud server platforms.
This update allows for vast improvements across many different areas such as virtualization, security and server management.
Table of contents
The details of how to upgrade your server OS to Windows Server 2025 are as follows:
Open the customer portal
Expand your server details
Select Reinstall and confirm
Whilst these steps are quick and simple, please note that reinstalling your server with Windows Server 2025 is a major change that will completely wipe all existing data on the server. This process performs a full clean installation of the new operating system. Be sure to back up any important data before proceeding.
Once installed, you’ll now have access to the following features:
Windows Server 2025 provides the following Hyper-V virtualization benefits:
You can now partition a GPU between several virtual machines (VM). Unlike previous Windows OSs, Windows Server 2025 allows multiple VMs to share one physical GPU. Whilst this was possible before with RemoteFX, the feature was removed due to security concerns. With Windows Server 2025, it’s back with enhanced security and even supports live migration, allowing you to move a VM from one server to another without downtime.
Dynamic processor compatibility enables VMs to use the same CPU features across the entire cluster, even if the physical servers in the cluster have different CPU models. Under older generations of Windows OS, it wasn’t recommended to mix different CPUs in a single cluster. Instead, you’d have to use a feature called compatibility mode, which disabled newer CPU features so that all servers in the cluster behaved the same way. But this could limit performance, with slower processing speeds and reduced efficiency for compute-heavy tasks.
A great addition, especially for smaller setups or more isolated environments, is the ability to create a cluster without needing an Active Directory domain. With Windows Server 2025, the new failover cluster type ‘Workgroup cluster’ allows you to create Hyper-V clusters out of non-domain (workgroup) nodes.
Windows Server 2025 can handle:
2048 CPU logical cores and 4PB of RAM per server
2048 virtual CPUs and 240TB of RAM per VM
This is a huge step up from Windows Server 2022:
1024 CPU logical cores and 4PB of RAM per server
1024 virtual CPUs and 240TB of RAM per VM
Windows Server 2025’s scalability potential is beyond that of our current regular server line-up. However, if you need this resource, get in touch and we’ll make it happen.
Windows Server 2025 provides the following security benefits:
Hypervisor-enforced paging translation (HVPT) is a new technology for Windows to protect the OS from kernel exploits. It’s enabled by default on supported hardware, so no setup is needed. This protects windows from system exploits that hackers could use to take control of the machine.
For more information, you can read the presentation on HVPT from the engineers that built this feature.
Windows Server 2025 has Windows LAPS built in. This is a development on the already existing Microsoft LAPS: an automatic local password management solution, allowing you to automatically rotate passwords of local accounts on servers and workstations. What’s new for this version is that it can generate not just the regular complex and random passwords, but human-friendly passphrases too that are easier to remember.
If you’ve struggled to replace regular service accounts with Group Managed Service Account, Delegated Managed Service Account (dMSA) is Windows Server 2025’s solution. Instead of using static service accounts with fixed passwords, dMSA lets you gradually switch to accounts that automatically update their passwords.
SMB is a protocol that Windows use for file sharing between computers. Previously, you could only enable or disable SMB2 in its entirety; now, you can specify a precise SMB version. For example, you can allow only the latest SMB 3.1.1 and block the other protocols easily. This helps improve security by disabling outdated, vulnerable protocols.
TLS (Transport Layer Security) protects data that is transmitted over the internet. With TLS 1.3, Windows Server 2025’s LDAP encryption is faster and more secure, and Kerberos (Windows’ authentication system) now supports new cryptographic algorithms.
Windows Server 2025 blocks old, insecure password changing methods in Active Directory by default, making sure you use stronger, modern password-changing mechanisms.
If you have a very large Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) infrastructure, Windows Server 2025 will be especially beneficial for the following reasons:
AD DS now takes advantage of NUMA-capable hardware and uses CPUs in all processor groups. This increases Directory Services performance, making processors more efficient for faster user authentication, group policy processing and directory searches.
Windows Server 2025 supports 32k database page size. This allows you to store larger objects in your AD DS database, where you can have up to 3,200 different entries in multi-valued attributes.
With thanks to the following features, Windows Server 2025 has improved management capabilities:
Previously you had to install OpenSSH server manually from a separate package, but now this secure server management tool comes preinstalled, without any extra setup.
SMB over QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Connections) allows your users to access a file server not through legacy TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), but through modern, secure (TLS 1.3) encryption. You can now safely access shared files from anywhere, without needing a VPN.
If you would like to upgrade to Windows Server 2025 to take advantage of these updates, you can do so via our customer portal. Or if you have a large fleet of servers that can’t be manually upgraded, get in touch with your account manager to see if an in-place upgrade option is available to you.
