 Greetings everyone, and welcome back for the Windows Server Summit. We're having a lot of fun this week, and thank you to everybody that's attending, providing feedback, asking questions. It's a lot of fun and it's a lot of excitement, and we have a full agenda, and it's great to see everybody engaged. I'm really excited about the session right now. We're going to talk about what's ahead for Windows Server, and I'm joined by the general manager for Windows Server, Hari Pulapaka. Thank you, Jeff. Hey, it's really awesome that you're here. It's awesome to be here. I love talking to you, connecting with our customers. This is going to be awesome. But before we're going to go deep, we're going to talk technical, but tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you like to do outside of Microsoft for just a moment? Hey, so I got two wonderful kids. I love playing sports, so I consider sports as my hobby. I play all kinds of sports. I play soccer, squash. Recently, I've been on a squash cake, so I've been going to pro club every other day mostly. In another life, I wish I could have been like an ATP professional, but Microsoft. Awesome. Well, look, we all have lives outside of Microsoft, and I'm glad that sounds like a lot of fun. Windows Server Summit, we're having a blast. We're talking about Windows Server 2025. There is so much new. Now, as the general manager for Windows Server, you actually own more than just Windows Server. What are the other things that you own, by the way? Hey, so I own, I'm the GM of Windows Server clearly. So I'm also owning the product of Windows Server. So my team owns what goes into Windows Server. Windows Server is a huge product, and so we own the core product definition. What are the key features you want to build for Server 25, what are the key features we think we want to land, what are the key things we want to land? Outside of this area, I also own Azure HostOS. So Azure is one of the biggest clouds in the world. So the OS that runs on Azure is built by my team. A lot of the reason for that is there's a lot of shared technology between Azure and Windows Server. So we'll talk more about that in detail as we get along. But that's another piece I own. Along with that, we also own the core platform layer of Windows. So my team, Jeff obviously, my team, we own virtualization stack, we own the kernel stack, we own silicon support, and we also own the storage layer. So a lot of the core pieces that you think of Windows, like the core, the meat, the cuts of the Windows, so to speak, that's all within my team. Then prior to becoming the Azure HostOS and Windows Server guy, I built Windows on ARM. So that's where I spent a lot of my time over the past many years building Windows on ARM, writing, doing the emulation work for Windows on ARM. Then after that, I started working on and I built Windows Subsystem for Android. So that's the next step. Then after that, we transitioned my team over to becoming the Azure and the Cloud-focused team. I know I had a bit of trivia. This is another ARM device in front of you. So I still haven't given up. Flexibility for Windows and Windows Server, and yes, and it's amazing. Windows Server, CoreOS, Azure HostOS, core hypervisor storage, there's a lot on Hari's plate. Again, it's one of the reasons I'm really excited that we can have you today. So thank you so much. One of the things, obviously, as we look at Windows Server 2025, it's a huge product and it's really chock full of innovation. I look across the entire product and I'm excited by lots of different aspects. But I'm just wondering, if you had to point to like two or three specific aspects for Windows Server 2025, what are some of the things that you want to highlight? So when we started planning Windows Server 25, we wanted to pick a few teams that would resonate with our customer that are important to our customer, that are valuable to our customer to make their lives better. So the big teams that we sort of landed on are quality. We want to make sure Windows Server 25 is the highest quality, most reliable, the best performance, the most secure Windows Server 2025 yet. We focused on hybrid. We want to make sure like a lot of our customers, they have machines on-prem, they have servers on-prem, but they also use the cloud. They use multi-cloud. And so we expect this kind of hybrid environment to sort of be the durable state. Nobody is like, hey, I'm only going to use a disconnected word. They will all be in some sort of a hybrid state. And so we focused on hybrid and we wanted to bring real value in hybrid to our customers. And then security, you look at the world today. It is, it has a lot of tricks. And so we wanted to make sure Windows Server 25 focuses on giving you the right protection, the right advances that you need to keep your infrastructure, keep your mission critical software safe and secure. For example, you know, with Intel, we built HLAT that gives you protection for your hyperwise and your VMs. We built something called CET that allows you to make sure that, you know, kernel CET, that allows you to make sure that your software doesn't do stack, stack bypass. A little bit, yeah. No, no, but this is good hardcore innovation that we've delivered in 2025 to help protect our customers' apps and workloads. Exactly. And these are all things that just make it so much more harder for the attackers to go after your infrastructure. Awesome. So hybrid, quality, security, agree with you. Let's talk about security for a second. I know when I talk with customers a lot of times, security is something that's very top of mind. How do you see the security landscape that is kind of shifted for customers? You know, the security landscape is constantly evolving. You guys all know this. I don't need to explain this to you. Hackers are getting increasingly sophisticated. Nation-state attacks are going after your infrastructure because you know, that's how they get high-value information. And so we at Microsoft understand all of this, right? We have thousands of cybersecurity professionals daily, daily looking after a cloud and using the same technology to make sure on-prem software that we build is guarded against, right? So for example, the way we build Windows Server, we run actual pen test, we run actual fuzzing. And these are the same protection that everybody, like all of us use in our cloud infrastructure as well. And so, you know, as you think about the security landscape, we have decided to make Windows Server one of the most secure pieces of software that we can build, at least one of the best Windows Server till date. And so whether it's your mission critical workload like file server, AD or your exchange or your SQL, you know, Windows Server 2025 gives you a lot of features. You know, you know about VBS, virtualization based security. That's sort of been our cornerstone of security, right? We've built something called HVCI. It's called, it's basically code integrity that's protected by your hypervisor. So that way, if you have kernel malware, if you have admin malware, they can't attack your code integrity features. We've done a bunch of crypto optimization improvements. We've deprecated older protocols. Like, you know, SMB 1.0 is no longer enabled. We've added TLS 1.3, which is the latest TLS standard. And so we updated Active Directory to support new Kerberos features. And so overall, you know, I think security is an area we take very seriously. We want all our customers to use the latest so that they're safe. They keep their infrastructure safe, right? And there's going to be a few sessions in Server Summit. So I urge all of you to listen to those because I think they do a really good thorough job explaining what all the changes we've done to help make Windows Server secure. And those security changes really has a good description. It's really across the board. It's not just one technology. Yes, we've done a bunch of things in the hypervisor. Yes, we've gotten rid of old protocols. We've also hardened the firewall. We're getting rid of NTLM. Like Ned has got some sessions talking about the work that we're doing in the file server to harden the file server as well as changes to deliver local Kerberos. And actually, we're working on getting rid of NTLM, something that's been around since the 90s, my friend. Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's really incredible what's going on. And so the security work is happening across hypervisor protocols, storage, networking, so much more. I think in general, you know, we care deeply about our customers' quality, reliability, security, performance. So, you know, Windows Server 25 is sort of a culmination of all of these efforts. You'll have the storage session, for example, with storage, you're going to hear some of the key advances that we made in storage, you know, performance around NVMe, NVMe OF, like all of these latest modern standards that allow your SQL server, for example, to get the best IO perf it can get out of the hardware. Like the goal for all of us is to give you the speed of light, right? That's the whole point, the whole. The point of the OS is not to stay in the middle, creating lag and creating buffers and stuff. The point of the OS is to give you the app developer, give you the infrastructure owner, the speed of light, the best you can get out of the hardware. That's the whole point of why we're here. Completely agree. And I don't want to steal anyone's thunder, but Hari kind of mentioned it. Storage, make sure you watch the storage sections because there are some transformational performance improvements going on with Windows Server 2025 and storage. So a lot of good things going on there. All right, let's switch gears for a second and move from security to kind of the server experience. So, you know, if you look at Windows Server 2025, and I hope everybody on here has downloaded, or as a part of the Windows Server Insider program where you can download early builds. We want to get you evaluating, we want to get your feedback, we want you to test it with your application. So it's real easy for you to upgrade and get right onto it when we GA. But if you look at it immediately, you're going to notice, wait a minute, this doesn't look like the older versions of Windows Server. This has things that are more in common with Windows 11. It's got the experience as well as some features like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. So tell us how you think about modernizing the Windows Server experience. You know, Jeff, we talk to our customers. This sounds like obviously you talk to our customers, but no, we talk to our customers. And what we hear from customers is that they actually use the desktop on Windows Server. Windows Server is not just sitting under the, you know, in the back of the thing connected to the ethernet. They actually use the desktop. They log into your Windows Server and then they'd use the desktop to set up their firewall. They use the desktop to set up their rules. They use the desktop to install roles and definitions and all of those things. And our customers are comfortable using the desktop. You know, they use Windows PCs as their primary device. And so they're used to using all of this. And so as we look at this data, it becomes apparent to us that, you know, if people want choice and the choice is they want to use desktop, we want to make sure they get the best experience they can with the desktop. It is, we don't want to force them into a, hey, Windows Server should be headless. And so there's never going to be a desktop on it. That's not, we want to give customers the choice. And if they want to use desktop, more poverty we want to give. And so as we went down Windows Server 25, what we did is we wanted to make sure it gets all of the same user interface, same modernized user interface that Windows 11 has. And so when you start using Windows Server 25, you will see that it has the same task bar. It has the same task manager. It has the same settings app. You know, these are the things that you're used to using on your PCs. You know, you could use something like WinGate now. It was never possible before. You can use WinGate to install apps from your command line, install WSL using WinGate. Right? You may- Sysinternals. Visual Studio Code. SQL Server. Like, these are all advances that only happen because we are listening to our customers and giving them what they want. Like, hey, if you want to use Server Core, that is completely supported. Don't jump, don't take, don't get me wrong. If you want to use a headless version, Server Core is still there. We still love Server Core. If you want to use Windows Server Desktop, we are modernizing it to make it more in line with Windows 11. And so, you know, for historically, we never had Wi-Fi. We didn't have Bluetooth. So especially for people who are using Windows Server as a workstation, imagine not having Wi-Fi. So you have to run your wires everywhere. Now with Wi-Fi, you get it by default. You get Bluetooth enabled by default. You can use Bluetooth keyboards. It's like, you know, just overall, it just feels like a much more customer-friendly product with Windows Server 25. And the other nice thing about Wi-Fi in particular is for those people that want to deploy more servers at the edge, where they may not have a hardware available, but Wi-Fi is everywhere. Guess what? Now it's right there. Exactly, absolutely. So how do, you know, in terms of getting these features from Windows 11, you know, common look and feel and some of these features into server, how does that work exactly? Cause I'm not sure a lot of people understand that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, I mentioned this to you. We own sort of the core platform. The way Windows, if you think about roughly, it's in Russian download analogy, there's a core platform. It's called OneCore. And that core platform typically contains kernel, the hypervisor, storage tag, never key. And so that's sort of the rough core, we call it OneCore. And on top of OneCore, you have a set of other components that you want to add. You know, you'll have the user platform, UI, you'll have the app platform, and that's typically our IIS and SQL, these are all apps. And so that's typically how Windows is set up internally. Now the way we build Windows Server and Windows Client or even Xbox for that matter is the OneCore remains the same. And so you always have the kernel, you always have the hypervisor and so on and so forth. But until Windows Server 25, the way Windows Server was set up is it was set up as a parallel track. So you know, you would have Windows Client with its shell, with its feature, and then you would have Windows Server in a different track with its shell and with its feature. And our developers would individually add features from Windows 11 or Windows Client into Windows Server. And so this was a little bit problematic from a coding point of view because anytime you wanted to bring a feature from Windows Client, you would actually have to write and do net new XML work, net new packaging work. And so with Windows Server 25, we noticed that look, customers want more of these goodness UI goodness. And so what we did is we modernized sort of the Windows Server engineering system. So now what happens is that Windows Server and Windows Client are not parallel tracks anymore. They're on the same track. But keep in mind, that doesn't mean that you're going to get everything on Windows 11. We still are Windows Server. We want to have a very curated experience of Windows Server because we know our customers. We know our admins. We know the people who use Windows Server. So it's not like you're getting Windows 11. But what you're getting is a uniform engineering system. And the uniform engineering system allows us to give you features from Windows Client into Windows Server. So it's easier for us to pull things from this side into this side because they're all basically on the same train. So this componentization is really interesting because what you're telling me is there's one core and it's a common base for, again, kernel, storage, networking, compute, hypervisor, and it's in client, it's in server. And as the owner of the Azure host OS too, it's that as well. And of course, this is the Azure Stack family. So there's common code base across all of these. But then the feature differentiation, they're obviously between client and server. Very different. Exactly. So common core base always remains the same. And then the feature is how we build the SKUs. So that's how we build client, that's how we build server, that's how we build HCI, exactly, or Azure Stack. And so that's exactly how Windows is set up. And then if you wanna think about it, the common core hypervisor, the kernel, this is the same kernel that Azure uses. When you're running in 1000 core MCDs VM in Azure, that scale, that performance is the same that is available on Windows Server. It is the same hypervisor that's running on Windows Server. You know, it's the same perf that we do when you run SQL MI manage instance in Azure. It's the same thing, right? Like the performance that you get in SQL on Azure is the same performance you get with SQL on Windows Server. And that's the advantage of this, you know, this Russian doll analogy, so to speak. And that analogy is a great analogy. So let's look at this for just a moment. You mentioned 1000 core VMs, because Azure has these monster VMs. I saw one that has 1,792 virtual processors, almost 30 terabytes of RAM in one VM. That's running in Azure. That's deployed at planetary scale. It's running literally around the world. We take that, it's hardened, it's running, it's in production. And then we go, oh, by the way, this is gonna percolate into Windows Server because it's the same hypervisor. The same hypervisor is the same kernel. When you have lock contention because you're running in 1792 processors, that lock contention fix goes into the kernel. And that kernel is the same kernel that runs on Windows Server 25. So you get a feature from Azure in a Windows Server and then on the other side, you've got Windows Client. You've got Windows 11 with the new shell, the new settings, WinGaT, all of these new features. And those are percolating into Windows Server as well. You know, if you want a little bit more inside baseball, you know, hot patching. You know, how the story of hot patching came about? Azure wants four nines of reliability. Clearly when you have a VM running on Azure, we don't want you to reboot, right? Like that's the whole point of running in the cloud. And so we invented this thing called hot patching. The idea is when you have a host and you want to patch the host, you never want to reboot the host. And so we started, you know, the way hot patching typically works is that the function, start of the function, you have an empty slot called a jump. And in that jump, you say, here, go to this new function. And because, and if any time you find a bug in your function, we patch in, we add new code and the new code says, okay, cool, jump to this new code. And so you never see a reboot because any time the function is executing, we check this patch and we say, cool, let's go to the new guy. And that's how you get the new code with your null checks or whatever. And so that's why we invented hot patching. We invented hot patching for Azure to give you four nines of reliability. And now that's why you're getting that hot patching feature in Windows Server 25. Because we bought that feature back from our cloud into our on-prem customers. I love it. I love it. It's a perfect example of how innovation percolates within Microsoft. And we were careful and diligent about how we package it and do it in a consistent way. Absolutely. Wow, I'm loving this. Okay. This is really great. So one thing I want to point out is when, as we get ready for 2025 shipping later this year, one of the questions that I always get asked, I'm gonna put on the businessman's hat for just a second. Someone's gonna go, okay, so I want my organization to upgrade to 2025, but I wanna minimize risk as much as possible. That's always the big question I get asked is, well, I'm worried that it's gonna break an app or that it's gonna be hard or that process is really, really difficult, unlike on Windows like client, where we upgrade you from eight to 10 to 11 and it's all just very easy and it's a simple process. What would you tell someone about the upgrade process in Windows Server 2025 and the work we've done there? Hey, we talked about this one core and this thing and I feel like I'm gonna sound like broken record. But here's another reason why that's super useful. With Windows Server 25, what you can do now is you can open settings, go to your update, sorry, Windows Server 2022, you can go to your update, you click update and you will get Windows Server 25. Right there within the update settings. Wait a minute, let me say this one more time. You're telling me with Windows Server 2022, which has been shipping now for a couple of years, I'll be able to go to Windows Update and there'll be an option to go right to 2025. Absolutely, you do not need a media anymore. It's not like the old school world. Windows Server is now more and more like with the advances that you have with client. We have actual in-band update. So you can be on 2022 and you can hit update and you can go to Windows Server 25 just like you can do with your client. Because of this feature, because of this feature, because of this feature, now you have a Windows Server Insider program. The biggest thing about the Insider program is you don't, people, not all of them, but most people don't really like taking a new media and starting over, right? Like that's the reason why on PC it is so much more used. It's used because you're self hosting, you're using a machine and then boom, you'll get the next build, you click update and it just happens and it goes and you're done. And that's what we're doing with Windows Server 25. So now with Windows Server 25 you can get the same tech. Now here's the thing that you mentioned and I want to re-emphasize that. But just because we made it easier doesn't mean the quality suffers. We have made sure that Windows Server 25 has the best app compact. For example, every night we are running an app compact cycle of around 100 apps. We make sure that any time code is checked in it goes through an app compact gate. And that gate ensures that if something breaks an app, any, like we have a set of top most used apps, we actually make sure that code is reverted. The build is broken. And so just because you're getting a lot of these simple usage models, like hey, you can just upgrade from within your app, within your Windows, doesn't mean the quality suffers. We are investing in quality to make sure that once you go to Windows Server 25 you have the best experience. Because there is nothing worse than having a customer upgrade to Windows Server 25 and then be like, oh, my favorite app doesn't work. No, that would be a huge fail in our part. And so we want to make sure that doesn't happen. And backwards compatibility has always been a longstanding testament to what we do here at Microsoft. 100%, right? Like you've seen Raymond Chen's blogs talking about how much effort he spent on app compact. Yes. And that is not fake news. That's 100% real news. Wow. So that's really awesome. And I can tell you from the upgrade standpoint someone who's been, that build-to-build upgrade we call flighting kind of way. So if you ever hear us talk about flighting that's what we mean. If you're in the Insider program you've been already hopefully testing this because it's been there. I've been using it. It's amazing. Like as Hari said, I don't need to download media and install from scratch. I'm literally flighting from build to the next build. All right, well listen, any last comments you want to leave us with? I feel like this has been really awesome. I want to give you a minute or so to kind of wrap up for anything on top of your head. First I want to thank our customers for using Windows Server. Whether you are a disconnected Windows Server user whether you're a Windows Server user in the cloud any cloud, whether you're a hybrid user who works on-prem or in the cloud. Thank you. We want to meet you where you are and so we want to make you successful with using Windows Server. So thank you for using it. And then finally I want to thank all of our users who are watching this server summit. This was a monster effort by the team. There's a bunch of core low-level engineering details that you're going to hear. A lot of inside baseball. Not really, you know, I don't know how useful it is for everyone but you want us, you want to hear from us. We are here to share our inside knowledge how we build this feature, why we build this feature, why we, so thank you for watching all of this and then thank you for all of our Windows Server customers, I think. Thank you. You are why we are here. Well thank you Hari. Really appreciate your time. Thank you again to all of the viewers. This has really been awesome. I want to take a moment to remind you to please fill out your evaluations. The reason why we're able to do these, have these interesting conversations, deliver on this three-day agenda with Microsoft folks, with Intel folks, with MVPs is because this is something you were asking for. You wanted more content, you wanted more technical deep dives and that's what we're delivering. So please fill out your evaluations. With that, thank you very much and we'll see you for the next session.