Windows Server: Today, tomorrow, and what’s next

Hey folks, welcome to the 2026 edition of the Windows Server Summit. I'm Rick Claus and I thought I'd kick you off and give you a bit of an overview about what's going to be going on today and the next couple of days actually. This is an event that takes place on May 11th, 12th, and 13th. Now, we're going to be starting at 7:00 a.m. as far as content is concerned. Uh we've got over 16 sessions that have been created and delivered by the engineering team who make Windows Server and all of its accompanying pieces of software. Uh and you are going to have the ability to go through watch these sessions, interact and have live chats, and also ask your questions to the different members of the engineering team. If you want to see the full agenda, please go to aka.ms/wsagenda and register for Tech Community to make sure that you will have full access throughout the entire event. But, you know what? Let's actually kick things off. I've got here with me today Neil Hinnett who is the I was going to say the team lead for Windows Server, but you're basically the gentleman that's in charge of the Windows Server product team. Is that right? >> Exactly. I spend a lot of time thinking about the Windows Server product, how to build a awesome server product that customers love, and we'll hear a little later today from my partner in crime Michael Bernstein who leads Windows Server engineering. >> Excellent. Now, why don't you give us a little bit of a background about yourself? How did you get started at Microsoft? How did you end up in this particular role and then we'll go on from there? >> So, great question. I am a Windows native. I joined Microsoft in 2014 to work in Windows client on the driver platform. Did that for a few years and then moved into the cloud working on the Azure Virtual Desktop service and Windows 365 service where we bring Windows client into Azure for our customers. Um I was part of the small group who designed the operating system composition for the Windows 365 link product. >> Oh, is it the little hardware device? >> That little puck that people all around the world are using to connect to Windows 365 from where they are. I spent some time on PC gaming. And then I had the opportunity to come into this role and complete the, you know, with the the whole Windows portfolio and lead the Windows Server product team. And I'm just super excited to be here today. >> Nice. Now, Windows Server 2025 has been around now for we're clocking in at about 2 years for how long it's been around. I'm like, what are you most proud of for what the team has done and accomplished with the release of Windows Server 2025? >> You know, the thing that I'm the most proud of is we're in a period of extraordinary change in the industry. The rate of change has never been higher in my career. And this is something that both my team and our customers have to deal with. On the server team, we are we're acutely aware that we provide an operating system that is the foundation for customer businesses all around the world. >> Right. >> And so if we can't keep up with the change, there's a ripple effect that prevents them from keeping up with that rate of change in all of their businesses. I'm really proud of our team's ability to handle that rate of change, keep Windows Server 2025 secure, keep Windows Server 2025 really high quality despite all of that. >> Mhm. Now, we've heard it's been basically a fast start for adoption, one year adoption rates here with Windows Server 2025. What do you think's driving that particular momentum? >> You know, I think the big driving force between the awesome start we've had for the 2025 product is is really it comes back to that rate of change. I think our our customers are really smart. They understand that when you're in an environment that's changing rapidly, you have to handle that with today's technology, not the technology of 5, 10, 15 years ago. >> Right, right. >> And so when they think about how do they keep their businesses efficient, how do they keep them secure, how do they keep them moving forward, they know that they need to come on to Windows Server 2025. >> Mhm. Now, if you had to summarize Windows Server 2025 in like just one phrase, like what would you tell IT leaders about Windows Server 2025? >> Windows Server 2025 is ready for you. That's what I would say. We're 2 years in, the product is rock solid. We've got customers all around the world using it. They're super happy with what they've got. Try it out if you haven't already. >> Nice. Now, before we dive into some features that you're interested in and what the team's been working on and some details in the sessions, like what would you say directly to customers and also to partners who helped shape the release of Windows Server 2025? >> I I would say a huge thank you to our customer base all around the world and the partners that we build the Windows Server operating system and server hardware with. Uh it really is a global team effort. The diversity of uh of use cases, of businesses that the server product supports requires input from customers in every industry vertical at every scale. We listen a ton to what our customers have to say. We appreciate all the feedback that we get at Ignite, informally, formally, conferences, everywhere. So, thank you. Keep it coming. >> Nice. Now, I was a PM in a previous role. I know we have dev uh different pain points that we talk about that uh are being solved by the types of solutions that we're bringing out. So, I'm going to put you on the spot here. What would you say would be your top two or three customer pain points that when you set out with the team to create Windows Server 2025, set out to solve? Got an example? >> You know, um when I think about some of the big rocks for Server 25, um patch velocity was a big one. We released hot patching for Windows Server 2025 to help customers um through in Azure and through Azure Arc get uh patches applied quicker and with zero downtime. Um we were as well responding to the rise of the GPU server. We wanted to make sure the customers who were buying hardware with powerful GPUs were able to use um best-in-class GPU virtualization technologies to get the most out of that hardware. >> Mhm. >> And then, you know, every our release cycle is long, and so every cycle we think about how do we help keep the server operating system modern for our customers. That led to a focus on overall operating system performance, reliability, and with Server 2025, we modernized the server desktop experience to look and feel more like Windows 11. >> Okay. Now, I want to dive into the hot patching piece cuz obviously I'm really excited about it. It's really, really big as far as what it can actually do, but what have you seen change for customers and different IT organizations that are using hot patching now where they don't have to really address this downtime piece? >> So, the big deal for customers who who have deployed hot patching is they have to retain fewer, you know, backup resources for their hot patch applied fixes because they can do everything without bringing the server down. They can repurpose some of their IT resources to do other things during that period where they're able to deploy much more quickly. And then finally, they carry less business risk as they're able to apply patches faster without having to worry about bringing workloads online and offline, up and down, and managing that complexity. >> Mhm. Now, do you have like a particular scenario for types of customers that the hot patching really kind of pays off? Like critical infrastructures or regulated industries? Or is it really something that's for everyone? >> So, the only customer for whom I'd say hot patching isn't relevant is the customer who doesn't want to keep their systems current. And to that customer, I would say, you need to keep your system current. >> Absolutely. >> And so, we really look at hot patching as something that, of course, it's incredibly valuable for security-conscious customers. Anyone who cares about security should have already deployed hot patching. >> Right. >> But, it's relevant for every customer everywhere, and we really want to help people be successful with this technology. >> Nice. Good point. And you know what? We actually have a really good hot patching session coming up right after this keynote. So, stay tuned for more details later there. I want to pivot a little bit and now talk about the next thing you talked about, which was GPUs. They're all the rage. Everyone's talking about GPUs. What's the shift that you're expecting to see in the way that modern workloads are happening using GPUs virtualization on Windows Server? >> We're seeing more and more hardware ship with GPUs out of the factory and customers are doing greater and greater diversity of things with uh GPU. With SQL Server 2025, the SQL team released rag search for large SQL databases. This is a critical um AI accelerated database capability. We also see customers do a wide range of things uh that require different size VMs, being able to take different size slices of the GPU hardware on the underlying server. And so, that's why we care so much about GPU virtualization is enabling that really wide diversity of customer usage. >> Nice. Now, what's the simplest way that you can explain why GPU virtualization matters in this world as opposed to dedicated GPUs inside dedicated boxes? >> GPU virtualization enables me as a customer to buy a pool of hardware and after the fact use it for many different types of things and make decisions about slicing that resource in different ways over time. I'm not limited by what I chose to buy a year ago. I can make changes as I go. >> Nice. And so again, we've got some really good sessions talking about GPU virtualization coming up in this in the Server Summit. So, stay tuned for more information. The last one I want to ping you about right now is something that's near and dear to my heart. I got started with Active Directory early in my career back back last century, if you want to know where that comes in. But Active Directory is still very much mission critical. What improvements do we have in store for Windows Server 2025 customers? >> We love Active Directory and we know it's the backbone for organizations all around the world. Right. The story for AD in 2025 was performance and security. Two investments I'm was super excited about in Windows Server 2025 for AD are the work that we did to support post quantum crypto algorithms for AD certificate services. And some significant improvements to performance for large AD deployments that help those big customers spend less time managing AD and more time on their core business. >> Nice. Now, again, I keep on calling this I sound like a broken record. We've got more sessions coming on AD after this particular keynote and throughout the rest of the week. But putting you on the spot, do you have one or two sessions that really kind of stand out for you that you're really interested in following? >> You know, Rick, two really popped to mind for every customer everywhere and that's the security session we'll have later this week and Hyper-V. Virtualization is a core competency today. >> Absolutely. >> And then I'd encourage all of our customers to view the rest of the sessions as a menu. You know best what drives your business forward. Whether it's storage, networking, or fundamental improvements in the operating system, choose what works for you. >> Nice. Now, this is kind of an awkward question, but it's come up to me an awful lot in the past talking to customers online and in person at events. And some customers think that really that they're not convinced that there is innovation taking place in the Windows Server environment. And what can you say around that and how does this complement this concept that I've heard of before with continuous investment? How does that come to fruition? >> You know, I I get this question a lot too, Rick. And I always like to answer it two ways. The first is I want to reassure you and everyone listening the server business is a massive growing business around the world serving all of Microsoft's strategic customers. It is foundational in our product portfolio. And the second is Microsoft's largest customer of Windows Server is actually Microsoft. We prove out technologies and new products like Azure Virtual Desktop in Azure. And then we look hard constantly at how do we bring that goodness to customers all around the world. That's part of by the way I'm so by I'm so excited about Hybrid AVD, which is in preview right now. >> Mhm. Now, can you give me an example of what Hybrid AVD means? What does it solve? What customer scenario is is this really aimed at? >> So, Azure Virtual Desktop is a service that we offer to help customers virtualize Windows 11 desktops. Think a call center, think a mobile worker who needs to be able to connect from anywhere in the world to a desktop with their data on it. AVD is a service that was born in Azure, has grown in Azure, and we're now bringing that greatness outside to our customers everywhere in the world through Azure Arc. >> Okay. Now, the next one that comes into play with regards to adoption and with regards to deployment of Windows Server 2025 comes around a word that sometimes infrastructure people are hesitant to use. And that word is upgrades. Sometimes is also where plans fail or stall and don't actually get to move forward. So, I know that there are some updates with regards to updates on Windows Server. Give me a little bit of background information and why is this important? Why was there such a big focus on this? >> Making the upgrade path as smooth as possible for our customers is a huge priority for us because we understand that what customers care about is their business operations, not executing server updates. So, with Windows Server 2025, recognizing that we have customers who use our product for a decade or more, we extended our support for down-level upgrades to the modern OS all the way back to N minus 4. Historically, we've only supported the past two versions of the server OS. Now, we go four levels down, so any customer on any supported Windows Server version can get to 2025 today. >> Okay, so what would you say would be your one-stop-shop advice for someone with regards to why they should upgrade to Windows Server 2025? >> In the past, our customers have often had to make a trade-off between being on a modern version of the operating system and continuity of their business. We've made it easier than ever for you to get secure with the least possible downtime with these n minus four updates. The two hop upgrade is a thing of the past. >> I love that. Now, what about SQL customers? Why should they go ahead and do the upgrade to latest version? >> SQL customers should be some of the most motivated people to upgrade to Server 2025. We work hand in glove with the SQL team every release to tune the performance of SQL Server on Windows Server. And the SQL Server team has introduced in SQL Server 2025 new AI capabilities that allow you to use generative AI with your databases, all powered by the GPU capabilities in Windows Server 2025. You need both to succeed. Upgrade now. >> Nice. Now, if you're going to give the first step that you recommend for everyone watching this right now, what is your first step to be able to start an upgrade journey this quarter? >> You know, my advice to everyone is to turn to your IT director, turn to your IT department, and ask them to get your test servers upgraded to Server 2025. We really think you're going to love it. >> Nice. So, let's let's shift a little bit here because we've been talking mostly about Windows Server from what I would consider to be like an on-premises exclusive kind of place. We both work for Microsoft. I've been working in Azure for a number of years. Uh there's this thing that's known as Azure Arc. And I'm curious, like what is your view about the unique advantage of what Azure Arc brings to the table for our customers? >> You know, Arc is really a reflection of Microsoft's recognition that modernization is a journey. Mhm. Azure is the best place for Windows workloads, but it takes customers some time to get there. Arc enables you to take that journey at your speed and manage your entire estate across on-premises and in Azure through a single pane of glass as you transition that business into the cloud. >> Okay. Now, you can connect up Arc to other services, right? To get even more insight and more information? >> This is one of my favorite benefits of Arc beyond that core manage your whole fleet in one place capability. You can buy Defender, Sentinel, Monitor for our customers who care about observability and security, which should be everyone. This is a huge huge win. >> Nice. So, we've talked a lot about upgrading and the experience with that's like, but then there's also that next path that we're talking about, which is talking about migration and modernization. And so, I'm curious, what are you seeing from common paths with regards to rehosting, re-platforming, and even refactoring with regards to how Windows Server 2025 and Arc fit into this? >> You know, our our customers today have more choice for compute services than they've ever had before. >> Right. >> And so, the modernization journey has become something um more complex, but more valuable than the old lift and shift model. And so, I see customers who are making the the evolution from on-prem operations to IaaS. Windows Server runs great in Azure. >> Right. >> Um I see customers who are modernizing to PaaS services like Azure SQL, and I see tons of customers who are making that leap uh to truly refactor their workload into uh the constellation of SaaS services that Microsoft provides. >> Mhm. >> The great thing about Arc and Server 2025 is that allows you to move workload by workload at your own pace and get all of the core parts of your business to the places that they need to go in Azure. >> Nice. It's been great you could spend time with me answering these questions, which is awesome, but I think we have someone waiting in the wings that we should probably bring out. What do you think? >> Yes, I think it'd be awesome to bring the man responsible for all the amazing engineering in Server 2025 out, my counterpart Michael. >> You know what? That's awesome. Let's actually bring Michael in and let's have a chat. >> Hello. >> How you doing, Michael? >> Good. It's good to be here. >> Now, I'm curious, can you give us a bit of background? Neil here calls you the the master of engineering when it comes to Windows Server 2025. But give us a bit of background on what you do for a job and how you got situated at Microsoft and using and working with Windows Server. >> Yeah. Well, thank you. It's been gosh, I started in 1999 as an intern. I was working on the clip art gallery back when we had clip art. And since then I've been an OS generalist. I've gotten the chance to work on several different layers of the OS. I worked on handwriting recognition. I worked on accessibility for the blind and the deaf. I had a chance to go over and work on Xbox One for a while, which was fantastic, and then came back uh and contributed to different layers of the Windows architecture, and I've been working on server since about 2021. >> 2021, that's cool. And you both haphazardly kind of connected with your different roles over the years, or was there some kind of connection in your backstory? I just didn't didn't know that there was kind of a backstory at all. >> Well, you know, we've worked in the same division for quite a few years now. >> Yeah. >> I had a I had a chance to work on that Windows 365 link device that Neil was mentioning earlier. >> Very cool. >> probably our first actual program together. >> I think that's right. >> Nice. Now, here we are in Windows Server 2025 world, and I'm going to ask you the first question that's coming out here is really is you've you've talked about the different roles you've had, the stuff you built and you worked together on and that you've have built as well, but I'm curious, are you getting questions and and are you uh seen where customers are thinking or or considering should they be continuing to build on top of Windows Server for the long term? Is it is it worth their time to be able to go off and do this? >> Yeah, I am getting questions like that, and I think one thing I would really want them to understand is how much Microsoft itself really bets on Windows Server. We clock billions of core hours of usage on Windows Server every single day. All of our major services run on Windows Server. It's hugely important, and so honestly, a big part of my job is making sure that Windows Server is a great platform for our 1P internal customers and that they are very satisfied and they're demanding, I will tell you. Uh and so, I'm able to bring the the fruit of the work that we uh get stable, that we make them happy and bring that back to all of our customers. >> Nice. So, how about what would you say would be the biggest opportunity over the next few years for people? >> Yeah, and it's a it's a crazy time. I mean, gosh, the every week is different. It's kind of a frothy time in in the landscape and so, um we're we're trying to be dynamic and keep up with all the changes, but yeah, I think in the midst of all these changes, security and reliability just continue to be so important and so, we we're looking hard at the innovation that's coming up. We're trying to keep pace with silicon and storage and networking and make sure that we are bringing all this innovation to the platform, but really making sure that we sync those security and reliability expectations that our customers have for us. >> Now, Neil, where are you hearing from customers for where their most conviction should be about where Windows Server should go next? >> You know, the number one thing that I hear from our customers is that Windows Server customers love Windows. They've built a business on it over the last 20 years and they're looking for us to make sure that they have an awesome awesome platform for the next decade and the decade after that. And that's where the consistency ends because every business runs on different workloads with different needs and that's where Michael and I spend a lot of time trying to see to to understand the signal in the noise and figure out how we make the right investments that accrue to the most possible customers for that next decade. >> Right. Now, Michael as the engineering person, what are your clearest signals that you can pass along to customers that will see them through to the next decade. >> Yeah. I think number one, we really want to be building trust with every update. And I wish more of this were visible, but is this is something I get quite excited about is we work hard every single month to raise the bar for the quality of our code, whether it's static analyzers that run, newest compiler tool chains, uh taking the latest techniques for blocking security exploits and rolling them into the product. So, a lot of this is invisible because it should be invisible, but I do want to make sure our customers know how much effort we put into keeping those security promises and and keeping the bar high as the threat landscape evolves. Uh I think beyond that, uh working hard on reliability, making sure that we keep those five nines expectations that customers have for us. Um and then, gosh, after that, I think you'll see a lot of investments in management. I'm super proud of Windows Admin Center. It's one of my team's particular projects, and so you know, look at our investments in Windows Admin Center and the ways that we're trying to evolve the management of Windows Server uh as a as a clear indication of the way that we are betting. >> Yeah. And so, when you say, you know, Windows Admin Center is one of them, uh is that one of your top priorities that you're looking for driving for next release? >> Yeah, absolutely. So, I think I put a lot of energy into Windows Admin Center and making sure that it's it's great. It's very exciting. I think it it allows us to bring a lot of the newer expectations around web management and a more modern UI surface to our customers to manage their existing server workloads. So, I I love Windows Admin Center. I think it's great. Think you can >> And another one to follow up on that one? >> Absolutely. I think um ReFS, the reliable file system work, uh our we are bringing ReFS to the um OS drive itself, and so I'm spending a lot of my personal time working across teams at Microsoft to make sure that all the server roles play nice on ReFS and that it is a fantastic experience when people are ready to move to it. >> Nice. Now, Neil, building on what Michael was just saying, what are you hearing from customers that are indicators for you that this is something that you should be focusing on as a way of shaping your set of priorities for what's coming out for Windows and next version of Windows Server. >> You know, management is a big theme that I hear from customers. Windows Server is a successful product with a long history and that's a fantastic thing that we're really proud of. It also comes with a large tool set both inside the company and outside of the company and so bringing um more coherence to our management tool suite is really important to me. Um helping our customers navigate some of the macro trends in the global market that we compete in is really important to me. Customers are dealing with price increases for hardware. They're dealing with, like Michael was mentioning, motivated um attackers around the world attempting to disrupt their business operations. And so for us it's really about, you know, putting aside the features of the moment. There are always those specific things that we do in every release. It's how do we move this entire platform forward in a way that keeps customer businesses healthy and moving forward at the maximum possible velocity for them. >> Yeah, interesting. Uh Michael, I want to draw into something that you said a little bit earlier when you were giving your answers, which was specifically earning trust with every update. You talked about updating systems, that sort of stuff in the migration piece of things. Um what does that specifically translate when you say earning trust with every update as far as our customers are concerned? >> Yeah, you know, trust is so personal but I I think I'd begin with uh I know how important those monthly Patch Tuesday updates are. We put a lot of work into those and so I sure want to make sure that that every Patch Tuesday update raises the bar that when people go to get those monthly updates and deploy them, they can trust that that update is going to make their product better and that it's going to be a good experience for the customers. And then on top of that, I think the um the reliability piece, I think making sure that these workloads run flawlessly, that that we don't have surprises. You know, I think in uh sometimes our uh our client customers like novelty. Novelty's fun, new features are great. Server customers, not so much. It's It's less about the novelty, >> Yeah. >> more about the predictability. >> Predictability, reliability, and all the rest of the stuff that just keeps the keeps everything moving. >> That's right. >> Yeah. Neil, uh what are some practical ways that you see right now with Windows Server 2025 that are moving customers towards this trust model that we've got? >> You know, Michael talked about some of the futures that we do to help build that trust. I also want to highlight that we have an extraordinary group of people within Microsoft whose full-time job is to make servicing seamless. >> Okay. >> They work really hard, are super passionate about this. I also want to talk about how Michael and I think structurally about building this trust because, you know, I was talking about we have a large diverse customer base with very different needs all around the world. Every customer has that magic feature that they want really bad, and they want it today. And they don't want anybody else's magic feature, because that's disruption. >> Right. >> And so, we've shifted with Windows Server 2025 to a model over time where we're shipping code into the product when it's ready, but disabled by default. So, customers have a menu of new value that they can pick from, but they're guaranteed not to be disrupted by somebody else's magic feature. >> So, we don't have to wait for the big huge massive milestone releases. Things are coming out at different times, but they're off. >> In a safe way. >> And then people can choose to evaluate them, turn them on as they need to, and then put them into production. >> Excellent. Now, uh Michael, how about shifting a bit, because we talked about this before you arrived, about the building blocks of using Windows Server 2025, but then also benefiting from Azure capabilities and Azure innovations as well. What are your What's your thoughts on this in the on-premises world? >> Yeah. I think we we love Azure so much. I think the the Azure the cloud technology, the powers that it unlocks, the ability to move workloads fluidly through cloud and hybrid to on-premises environments is just fantastic. So, I'm always going to lead with cloud and we certainly do internally. So much of my own team's engineering systems run in the cloud and yet we know that on-premises is super important and that so many of our customers have really strong reasons to stay there. So, for my team, we make sure that every feature gets heavily tested in a large on-premises lab. We have physical machines for cluster testing, reliability testing, performance testing, networking testing. And so, maintaining that lab is is a big job by itself, but it's worth it because we want to make sure that when our on-premises customers get those new features, they can feel confident that those features are going to behave well. >> Yeah. Now, potentially building off of that, but also maybe even separate if you both have some thoughts on this one. I'd be curious if you could find out You've both said at some point in time that Windows Server runs best on Azure. How would you tell a customer what you actually mean by that? >> I mean, just to pick up on the engineering side, I think >> Yeah. >> people may not realize, but it's it's Windows Server all the way down. So, the the Azure host blades that are powering the data centers are running Windows Server. We've got guest VMs on Windows Server. There's Windows services running on top of that. It gives us an ability to optimize up and down the stack in ways that are unique and that are really powerful. So, part of Windows Server best on Azure is just that we are able to optimize the whole stack top to bottom. >> Right. And to build on that one, >> And so, you the power of modern software and compute technology today is incredible. It allows our customers to do amazing things. And managing all of that complexity yourself is really difficult. And so, one of the huge benefits running Windows Server in Azure is that we're going to take so much of that complexity away for you. And that's both in the management of the server OS itself, and it's also in the services that are co-located with you when you're in Azure that are just super easy to connect into your VMs to attach, um and get, you know, focus more and more of your time as a customer on the things that drive your business forward rather than managing your own infrastructure. >> Nice. Now, kind of to close this one section down, I don't know who's going to answer this one here. I'll let you fight this one out. But, uh what would you say would be like a decision tree or a framework you could use as an infrastructure person, an IT administrator, an executive about where to deploy your next Windows Server workload. Would it be on premises or would it be in Azure? >> You want me to take this one? >> Please do. >> You know, uh my my advice to any executive would be first you need to have a really strong inventory of what your workloads are. Without that, you can't get to the next step, which is to look at that list and think about what is your road map for each one of those classes of compute. Is this something that's going to be a durable part of your business for the next 10, 20 years? Is it something that you need to modernize into Azure PaaS or Azure SaaS? Is it something that for unique physical world or regulatory reasons needs to remain on prem? And you should develop that road map and then begin executing on it piece by piece. Don't view your modernization as this massive one-shot effort. That's how I see customers get bogged down and modernizations fail. Take it piece by piece. The cloud is going to be the right place for almost everything. For those things that it isn't, we've got a great solution for you as well. >> Nice. Okay, well, how about this one? Um Neil had alluded to this earlier where we ship functionality, but it's off by default, stuff like that. Part of that cycle process is even letting people try things out beforehand, and that's known as like preview functionality or preview features. If you could think of one preview feature that you would like people to go off and try, what would it be? >> I am super excited about Windows Admin Center virtualization mode, overview mode. You know, I think V mode is a is a major update that we're bringing to public preview two right now and I think the ability to manage your virtualization fabric, to really extend WAC from one machine or a single cluster off to large numbers of clusters uniformly. Uh super powerful. We worked so hard on this. Engineers not getting a lot of sleep, but very excited about the product and we are excited to have our customers try it and send us their feedback. >> Nice. And Neil, as an as a as a question to you, how about how do you determine different success criteria for these different previews? If they proceed, if they get changed, stuff like that. How do you how do you fix figure that out and stuff out? >> You know, we we take an iterative approach to this and we go through multiple different previews. We often have a private preview and then a public preview. In some cases, like with Windows Admin Center virtualization mode, we're even doing two public previews. >> Oh, okay. >> At each stage of the process, the criteria by which we evaluate product market fit, by which we evaluate quality and performance, the security of the feature change and the bar becomes higher each step we refine and make sure that we're building a new capability to the product that customers are going to love. >> Mhm. >> Um and so that way, by the time we get to the end and we're ready to GA, we really feel comfortable signing both of our names to this is what customers want. It's going to be secure. It's going to be super performant. >> Nice. Now, I'm curious. Um either one uh maybe maybe my Michael, you could get this one here. Where should people go uh this week over the course of the event where they can go off and get started to provide feedback uh about the next versions of Windows Server and also a preview functionality. >> Yeah. Uh I think I think if you just search for our Windows Admin Center entry page, we'll have the link to the preview there. And that would be a great place to get started. Windows Admin Center is a separate download from Windows Server, so that makes it easy to try on any server that you have available. >> Nice. And to to build on that for a second, I'm curious. Like we had this discussion off camera earlier talking about different types of management tools and where the investments are and stuff like that. Um what specifically issue does or sorry, what specific issue does Windows Admin Center, the the V-mode tool, actually solve? What problem is the thing that it solves the most? >> Yeah, when we when we started the journey with Windows Admin Center, we really thought about single machines or single clusters as the as the center of gravity. And part of the feedback from our customers was that's great, but they would like the ability to manage an entire virtualization fabric, whole sets of clusters spanning out to hundreds or thousands of VMs in a single pane of glass. And so if you're doing that in Azure, Azure is your pane of glass. But if you're doing that on premises, we had a gap. And I think that's where V-mode comes in. That's the problem that we're trying to solve. >> Nice. And then zooming out, how do previews and how does customer feedback shape what actually makes it into the next release? >> Um we have a ton of different ways that we engage with our customer base. We have public engagement like this Windows Server Summit. We have Microsoft's major forums like Microsoft Ignite. We run um smaller communities throughout the year where we gather feedback from customers. We pay attention to feedback in the Windows Feedback Hub. Um all of those things spark ideas that become previews that become parts of the product. Uh I want to highlight for you a challenge of this model that we talked about earlier where we're shipping new features disabled by default to get them out faster to customers. This also means it can be harder for customers to discover the new value in the product that's in preview. And so I want to encourage all of our customers, go look at the Windows Insider build change logs. That will have everything that you need to understand what's new in the product and how to try it out. The benefit of our model is that you'll never be disrupted by any of that change. The downside is sometimes you have to look for where you can get more value out of the product. >> Nice. And I would just add the the same Windows Server Insider community forums we monitor very closely and we really appreciate hearing from our customers there and we do our best to to answer back and and be there to to be present. >> Nice. Again, thank you so much both of you for taking the time to sit down and have a chat. Really appreciate it. Any closing thoughts before we kind of wrap up and get ready for the rest of the Windows Server Summit? Closing thoughts? >> You know, we've got an amazing few days ahead. We have a ton of really excited and passionate people ready to talk to all of our Windows Server Summit customers. I hope that you love the sessions. We're thrilled to be able to do them for you. And we're really looking forward to to hearing your feedback and making the next version of the product great. >> Nice. I would just add it's a privilege to be able to work on Windows Server. I think the engineers who work on the product are proud of their contributions, work hard to bring great engineering to you. We are excited to have you try out the fruits of our labors. >> Nice. >> You know, I um I think that we have two of the coolest jobs in the industry. >> Absolutely. >> Because we both get to build features within our teams and we get to look across Microsoft and figure out how to best integrate Windows Server in all of the other products that Microsoft offers. As you said, um I'm just so proud to have that opportunity. Really excited to bring the work of all of our teams and and the company here to all of you. >> Nice. Again, thanks guys. It was great chatting with you. Thank you so much for taking the time. I just want to let you folks know that you absolutely are going to want to stick around for the rest of this particular event, all three days. Stay with the feed. The videos are going to change automatically for you either on the hour or the half hour based on the length of what each session happens to be. And don't forget, while those sessions are live, you will have the ability to ask questions directly to the engineering teams that work on that product, that functionality, that feature. They're there in the live Q&A to answer your questions. And so take advantage of that. And I want to call out one extra thing. There is a special session. I think you two are going to be involved with this one. I'm not sure. That's going to be taking place on the last day at 7:00 a.m. It's the first session. And you got to have the entire extended leadership team of the Windows Server environment. That's going to be there to answer your questions, take your feedback, and make the product better. So again, thank you. And thank you for watching this. Really appreciate you taking the time. I hope you enjoy Windows Server Summit 2026.