Windows Server 2025 is here, and it’s packed with improvements to security, performance, and features. Even better, you can now get your hands on Windows Server 2025 hosting through the Atlantic.Net Cloud Platform!
In this article, we’ll explore everything you need to know about Windows Server 2025, from its different editions to its powerful capabilities. Whether you’re thinking of upgrading or starting fresh, let’s dive in and discover more about this important business server operating system.
What Is Windows Server 2025?
So, what exactly is Windows Server 2025? It’s the latest and greatest server operating system from Microsoft, designed to give businesses the tools they need to thrive. Think powerful features for virtualization, seamless cloud connectivity, enhanced security, and simplified management. Building on the success of its predecessors, Windows Server 2025 introduces a range of improvements and exciting new capabilities.
There are two new editions of Windows Server 2025:
- Windows Server 2025 Datacenter: A full-featured edition for large-scale deployments, virtualization, and advanced features. Designed for large enterprises with demanding workloads and advanced requirements. It offers advanced features like Storage Spaces Direct, shielded virtual machines, and unlimited virtualization rights. The Datacenter edition is ideal for critical workloads and large-scale deployments.
- Windows Server 2025 Standard: An edition designed for smaller businesses or those with less demanding needs. It includes essential server features and supports a limited number of virtual machines. Windows Server Standard is suitable for file servers, application servers, and other common server roles.
Its important to note that there is also different variations of each version, dependent on what you need. Both Datacenter and Standard come in versions with and without the “Desktop Experience”.
This means:
- With Desktop Experience: Includes a graphical user interface (GUI) similar to what you’d see on a Windows 11 desktop. This is useful for those who prefer a visual interface or need certain GUI-based applications.
- Without Desktop Experience (Server Core): This is a command-line only installation, offering a much smaller footprint, reduced attack surface, and better performance for some tasks.
Most of our users opt for the Desktop Experience; however, it’s nice to know that the server core version is available for the technically inclined and those who need a smaller footprint, better performance, and enhanced security.
Benefits of Windows Server 2025 Hosting
Choosing Windows Server 2025 hosting, especially through platforms like Atlantic.Net, provides plenty of new technology and numerous advantages to our customers.
Enhanced Security
Windows Server 2025 incorporates built-in security features, including advanced security capabilities like VBS key protection and Credential Guard, to protect your critical workloads and data. These advanced security features help mitigate threats and ensure the integrity of your server environments.
Optimized Performance
Experience improved performance with optimized resource utilization and new features designed for high performance. Whether running Windows Server deployments as file servers, application servers, virtual machines, or domain controllers, you’ll benefit from improved performance and scalability.
Centralized Management
Simplify management with Windows Admin Center, providing a centralized platform for managing your Windows Server environments, including on-premises and Azure Arc connected servers. This centralized management simplifies tasks and improves efficiency.
Cloud Integration
Seamless integration with Azure services allows you to extend your on-premises infrastructure to the cloud, creating hybrid cloud solutions. Azure Arc enables you to manage your servers across different environments from a single pane of glass.
Cost Effective Solutions
Windows Server 2025 hosting, particularly when considering cloud options like those offered by Atlantic.Net, can be a cost effective solution, especially when leveraging virtualization and cloud resources. Choosing the right edition and licensing model can optimize your IT spending.
Scalability
Scale your Windows Server environments easily to meet growing business demands. Whether you need to deploy new VMs or expand your existing infrastructure, Windows Server 2025 provides the scalability you need.
Latest Enhancements and New Features
Windows Server 2025 includes the latest enhancements and new features, ensuring you have access to the most up-to-date technology. These new versions bring improved performance, security, and management capabilities.
Windows Server Licenses
Understanding Windows Server licenses is crucial for compliance and cost optimization, especially when considering long-term usage and upgrades. Atlantic.Net makes this process super simple. With our Windows Server hosting plan there are no contracts, and you can pay-as-you-go, meaning you only pay for the resources you use.
It doesn’t matter if you use the server for 2 minutes, 2 months or 2 years; the licensing cost is included with the pay-as-you-go cost. This approach offers a level of flexibility similar to having active software assurance, allowing you to adapt your server usage without being locked into fixed licensing costs. There are no hidden extras!
Windows Server 2025 Key Features
Windows Admin Center
Windows Admin Center simplifies the management of your Windows Server environments with its web-based interface. From a single dashboard, you can manage servers across on-premises, Azure, and other cloud environments, performing essential tasks like configuring network settings, managing storage volumes and virtual disks, and monitoring server health and performance.
Windows Admin Center has matured into a powerful product. It’s not just about simplifying routine tasks; it’s about giving you deeper control and insights. Plus, with its extensible architecture, you can add even more functionality through a growing library of extensions, tailoring Windows Admin Center to your specific needs.
Security Features in Windows Server 2025
Security, as always, is another top priority in Windows Server 2025. The operating system includes a range of general availability built-in security features to protect your data and infrastructure:
- Credential Guard: Credential Guard protects credentials from advanced threats by isolating them in a secure virtualized environment, similar to the concept of secure enclaves, and reinforces a zero-trust security model.
- VBS Key Protection: VBS Key Protection safeguards your cryptographic keys by storing them in an isolated, virtualized environment, preventing access even if the operating system is compromised. This adds a crucial layer of defense against sophisticated attacks targeting your sensitive data.
- Transport Layer Security (TLS) Connections: Windows Server 2025 supports the latest TLS versions, including TLS 1.3, ensuring that all communication between your servers and client devices is encrypted with the strongest protocols available. This protects your data from eavesdropping and tampering, maintaining confidentiality and integrity.
- Network Security: Windows Server 2025 strengthens network security with features like Network ATC, which simplifies network configuration and helps prevent misconfigurations that could lead to vulnerabilities. This, combined with enhanced firewall capabilities and support for the latest security protocols, provides robust protection against unauthorized network access.
- Enhanced Security: Windows Server 2025 includes numerous enhancements to improve the overall security posture of your server environments. Beyond the features mentioned above, Microsoft has implemented numerous enhancements throughout the operating system to harden its defenses and reduce its attack surface, including improvements to user access control, threat detection, and exploit mitigation, providing a more secure foundation for your critical workloads.
Windows Server 2025 Virtuailzation
Windows Server 2025 provides a powerful platform for both virtual machines (VMs) and containers, offering enhanced performance and flexibility for your workloads. Hyper-V, Microsoft’s virtualization technology, is deeply integrated, allowing you to easily create and manage VMs. This latest version boasts significant performance enhancements, including faster VM startup times and reduced I/O overhead. A standout feature is GPU partitioning, enabling you to share a physical GPU across multiple VMs, ideal for demanding workloads like AI and machine learning.
Beyond VMs, Windows Server 2025 advances containerization with improved Windows Containers and enhanced Kubernetes support. This allows you to run containerized applications more efficiently and manage them at scale. Whether you’re consolidating your server infrastructure with VMs or embracing modern containerized deployments, Windows Server 2025 delivers the virtualization capabilities you need.
Active Directory
Active Directory remains a fundamental reason why our customer choose Windows Server environments, and Windows Server 2025 continues the strong support for on-premise AD. Active Directory (AD) provides the essential services for managing users, computers, other devices and other resources within your network using centralized authentication and authorization. AD ensures that only authorized users and devices can access specific resources, enhancing security and simplifying access control.
Windows Server 2025 introduces several enhancements to Active Directory, including improved performance for domain controllers, stronger security for machine accounts, and better integration with Azure Active Directory or LDAP client. These improvements make AD much more stable on cloud deployments, especially for larger organizations and those with hybrid cloud environments.
Powering Your Applications with Windows Server 2025
Windows Server 2025 provides a robust foundation for your application servers, offering the high performance, scalability, and reliability needed to support your critical business applications. Whether you’re running web applications, a database SQL Server enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, or custom-built cloud applications, Windows Server 2025 delivers the features and capabilities you need.
Enhanced Application Performance
One of the things that makes Windows Server 2025 shine is its sheer speed. Microsoft has fine-tuned the performance, so you get lightning-fast network speeds, minimal delays, and super-efficient memory management. This means your applications will run smoother and respond quicker than ever, keeping your users happy and your business running smoothly.
Support for Diverse Applications
But speed isn’t everything. Windows Server 2025 is also incredibly versatile. It can handle everything from traditional on-premises applications to the latest cloud-native ones. Whether your developers love.NET, Java, or open-source tools, they’ll find the flexibility they need to build and deploy amazing applications.
Simplified Deployment and Management
And speaking of developers, Microsoft has made their lives easier too. Setting up and managing your application servers is a breeze with familiar tools like Server Manager and the super-handy Windows Admin Center. And if you’re in the cloud with a provider like Atlantic.Net it’s even simpler, thanks to their intuitive interfaces and automated tools.
Advanced Storage Capabilities
Worried about your data? Don’t be. Windows Server 2025 has advanced storage features like Storage Spaces Direct, which lets you create super-reliable storage clusters. This means your critical application data is always safe and sound, even if a hard drive decides to take a break.
Enhanced Security for Applications
Of course, security is a top priority. Windows Server 2025 comes with a whole arsenal of security features to keep your applications and data locked down tight. Credential Guard, VBS enclaves, and confidential attributes are just some of the tools that help prevent unauthorized access and protect your sensitive information.
Network Optimization for Applications
Windows Server 2025 includes features that optimize network performance for your applications. Network ATC simplifies network configuration and management, while support for the latest TLS versions ensures secure communication between your application servers and clients.
Developer-Friendly Features
To help support developers, Microsoft introduced a new feature called Dev Drive. It’s a special storage volume that’s optimized for development work, making coding and testing faster and more efficient.
Windows Server 2025: The Ideal Platform for Your Applications
With its comprehensive set of features, enhanced performance, and robust security, Windows Server 2025 is the ideal platform for running your business-critical applications. Windows Server 2025 provides the foundation you need for migrating existing applications or building new ones.
Upgrading to Windows Server 2025
Upgrading to the latest version of Windows Server on Atlantic.Net involves a streamlined process that leverages our powerful cloud platform. Here’s how it works:
- Modify Service Plan: If you need to upgrade your hardware specs (CPU, RAM, storage) to meet the requirements of Windows Server 2025, you can easily modify your service plan through the Atlantic.Net Cloud Platform UI. This ensures your server has the necessary resources to run the new operating system efficiently.
- Deploy New 2025 Instance: Once your service plan is updated, you can deploy a fresh instance of Windows Server 2025. Atlantic.Net offers a variety of pre-configured images, including the popular Standard edition, allowing you to quickly spin up a new server with the desired configuration. This gives you the advantage of starting with a pristine, optimized installation of the latest Windows Server version, free from any potential legacy issues.
- Restore from Snapshot: To preserve your existing data and applications, you’ll need to restore them from a snapshot. Atlantic.Net’s snapshot feature allows you to capture the entire state of your existing Windows Server instance, including the applications, and data. You can then restore the relevant data from this snapshot to your new Windows Server 2025 instance, ensuring a seamless transition without data loss.
This approach eliminates the need for traditional in-place upgrades, simplifying the process and minimizing downtime. While Atlantic.Net handles the underlying infrastructure, it’s still recommended to verify that your applications are compatible with Windows Server 2025 before initiating the upgrade.
Atlantic.Net is proud to offer Windows Server 2025 hosting on our award winning cloud platform. Whether you’re looking to upgrade your existing infrastructure or deploy new Windows Server environments, Atlantic.Net provides the tools and resources you need to succeed. Our cloud platform offers scalability, security, and cost-effectiveness, making it the ideal choice for your Windows Server 2025 deployments.
Contact Atlantic.Net today to learn more about our Windows Server 2025 hosting solutions.
