 Welcome to Windows Server Engineering Summit, and to our session for Windows Server 2025, all about upgrades and updates. I'm bringing you the best team here along with myself, Harpreet Kaur, Principal TPM from our WSD Windows Servicing and Delivery Team Windows Server, and then Rob Hinman from Azure Edge and Platform, Senior PM, Windows Server, Utong DL, our Senior Product Manager from WSD Update Platform Team, and Rithi from our PM, our PM from our great partner, Fundamentals Installation Team. With that, let's tell you all about upgrades and updates. Let's go into the agenda. We will provide you with a quick overview of Windows Server pillars, 2025 pillars, but specifically about our seamless updates. Then I'll bring Rob, who's going to talk about some prerequisites, and then he will move into the N-minus media-based feature update. Then I have Utong, who's going to be talking all about who we are with. Feature updates, we have Windows Update. Then Rithi is going to close out with feature updates and quality updates, which you can do using WSUS as well, and then we will close out with the next steps. With that being said, you may be wondering, Windows Server 2025 is coming. We have amazing things which are coming in Windows Server 2025. It's going to be the most secure platform, it's going to have a lot of hybrid capabilities, it's going to retain the Windows Server apps as we modernize as well. But the key pillar is going to be seamless upgrades. That is going to be the focus for today, and that's what we are going to be talking about. With that, I'm going to pass it on to my friend, who's going to talk all about N-minus 4 before talking about a little bit of the prerequisite. With that, Rob, take it over. Thanks, Harpreet. Let's talk about feature update prerequisites. The first thing we want to cover is terminology. We're going to use the term feature update, which means the same thing as in-place upgrade, and we'll use quality update, which it means the same thing as a monthly update or an LCU, a latest cumulative update. We're going to be using these. These are the two types of updates that we're covering, but mainly we're focusing on feature update for this presentation. Just to be clear, we're harmonizing our terminology across all platforms. We have feature updates, that's the same thing as in-place upgrades, and then there's quality updates, which are your monthly security updates. With our terminology clear, now let's talk about the two ways that you can get Windows Server 2025. There's two ways, a clean install and a feature update. Remember, feature update is the same thing as in-place OS upgrade. Both of these approaches are supported, and both are useful in different scenarios for in different ways. A clean OS install is basically wipe and restore, where you're wiping the OS, but it means that you have to install all the libraries, frameworks, and applications on top of Windows Server 2025. A feature update or an in-place upgrade allows you to move forward to Windows Server 2025 without reinstalling your libraries, frameworks, and applications. The in-place upgrade or the feature update is a great way to move forward. You can use either of these techniques. It really depends on the situation, for what the situation is for your organization, and what meets the needs for your server. Some people get very dogmatic about one technique or the other, but you have the flexibility to choose either a clean install or a feature update. Finally, no upgrade or update presentation would be complete without a reminder that we're asking you to back up your Windows Server before your feature update. We really want you to be successful, and the best way you can be successful is to back things up. We know that feature updates have a failure rate. We know that they're 96 percent successful, according to the data that we have, and since there is a possibility of failure, that's why we're asking you to back things up. Now, the feature update capability is pretty good. At 96 percent reliability, we know that it's going to work for most customers. If you have a backup, then that protects your data. The upgrade is actually pretty good. If it does hit an error, most of the time it will roll back automatically without any problem. Just quickly note that feature update doesn't support an uninstall. Unlike Windows 11, which has a nice uninstall capability for up to 10 days, for Windows Server, you don't have the capability to uninstall after you upgrade. Troubleshooting can be done through looking at the logs, and of course, best practice is to test your backups with the restore test somewhere before you upgrade just to make sure that things are working. Let's talk about N-4 media-based feature updates. What we mean here for N-4 media-based feature updates, we're talking about set up.exe, which I think probably everyone has used at some point. You get the media from one of four places. You get it from the Volume License Service Center, from your OEM, from Retail, or from your Visual Studio subscription. The great thing about having the media in hand is it's very repeatable. You can do a lot of experimentation with the upgrade path that you want. Our news, what N-4 means is N-4 means you can upgrade to Windows Server 2025 from 2012 R2, 2016, 2019, or 2022 in a single step. We're testing this full matrix, and we're documenting any problems that we find. Just to be successful, plan for about an hour per server. Check that your server is activated before you upgrade. Realize that if you're a retail or OEM customer, you may need to purchase a product key. Back up your server and the application data. And if there is an issue with upgrade, we have log files. The Panther logs will show you where they are. And of course, we're going to document any issues that there are with feature update. Now, also I want to talk about AppCompat. So, internally, we test application compatibility, and we've been testing for years. So, we have really high confidence that Windows Server 2025 is fully compatible. Because we test both clean install and in place OS upgrade or feature update, we test them both all the time in a continuous loop for many applications. So, we're actually very, very confident. And set up that EXE technology is also the technology behind all of these, all the upgrade paths that we're discussing today. Okay, that's it for me. I'm going to pass it now onto my colleague, Yutong. Thanks, Rob. If you use Windows PCs, you'll know that it's easy for you to take a feature update. The update is available from the Windows Update Settings page, and the download and install happens automatically in the background after you decide to take the offer. For customers on desktop experience edition on Windows Server 2022 and Windows Server 2019, we plan to make it easy for you as well. If your hardware is able to update, you will see Windows Server 2025 offer to you on your server's Windows Update Settings page. The update experience is identical to Windows 10, Windows 11, and quality updates for Windows servers. You can use various features and policies to control your experience. For example, if you've set automatic update options, the download, install, and restart will adhere to the policy. If you don't set policies, the download and install will happen automatically in the background and you decide when you want to restart. It's, of course, always recommended to backup your data before you update, and you will have access to a compiled document of best practices to help you plan your update to Windows Server 2025. For customers on server core editions, without the Settings page UI, you will be able to update in a similar fashion via s-config from Windows Server 2022. We hope that these new ways to upgrade can help you get to Windows Server 2025 in a fast and smooth fashion. And with that, I will hand off to my colleague, Brittany, to talk to you about feature and quality updates on WSUS. Thank you, Utang. Over the past few months, our team has worked closely with the Windows Server product team to bring capabilities to leverage WSUS, Windows Server Update Services, an on-premise management solution for feature updates and quality updates with this new Windows Server 2025 release. Leveraging on-prem management capabilities was unveiled for client not too long ago, and we will now be available to Windows Server audience with Windows Server 2025. What this means is that you can use WSUS and Config Manager to manage both feature and quality updates for your Windows Server deployments. If you choose to leverage the on-prem solution for feature updates, you will see many benefits, such as automated upgrades. You can say goodbye to the days of painful manual media upgrades. By leveraging policies documented with best practices, you can officially manage the entire upgrade experience seamlessly and with confidence. With efficient updates, we've streamlined the upgrade journey, allowing you to also upgrade the operating system to the latest security patch seamlessly in just one reboot. With content retention, we understand the importance of doing a seamless transition during OS upgrades. That's why we've made sure that the optional content such as pods or feature on-demands remain intact throughout the entire upgrade process. Now, if you're gonna be using quality updates, you have many benefits as well, such as the support of automatic corruption repair, which is added in place to provide you peace of mind in the event that something does go wrong. Another benefit is online accessibility, which allows for the acquisition of features on-demands and language packs seamlessly without requiring an internet connection. And finally, this allows for the ability to eliminate local hosting of feature on-demand repositories and an OS recovery image. If you found that appealing, here's how you can try it out. These features work with any supported version of WSS, and the preferred version of Configuration Manager is 2203. Come GA, you can select from the Windows Server 2025 product selection. Under classifications, you can select upgrades to get feature updates, and you can select security updates to receive monthly quality updates. Please note that feature upgrades is once-for-release, and for the initial launch, we will only be supporting an upgrade scenario based on E&US media. There are best practices for these features that will also be unveiled closer to GA, to ensure that you're maximizing the various policies on-prem to support your infrastructure and to ensure a safe and secure deployment. If you would like to try this out prior to GA, please sign up, and we will be in touch shortly. We hope that you found this presentation helpful. Now let's talk about some next steps. We're all on a mission to make Windows Server 2025 the best operating system yet, and in order to do so, we would love to have your help. Please join the Windows Server 2025 Insider program to be up-to-date on new capabilities programs in the latest build. Also see below for some awesome links. And with that, thank you for your time, and we will now open the floor to questions. Thank you so much for joining us for this awesome session on upgrades and updates for Windows Server 2025. We hope that you enjoy the rest of your time at the Engineering Summit. Thank you.