Summary

This first chapter on Windows Server 2025 was an exploration of what it means to be a server and to discover what new features and functions Microsoft has gifted us this year. We also spent time gaining familiarity and comfort navigating around the interface. There are various ways to interact with Server 2025, and we will discuss many of them throughout this book, but most server administrators will interface with this new operating system through the full graphical interface, using both the mouse and keyboard to perform their tasks. If you have worked with previous versions of the Windows Server operating system, then a lot of the tools that you will use to drive this new platform will be the same, or at least similar, to the ones that you have used in the past. New operating systems should always be an evolution of their predecessors, and never entirely new. I think this was a lesson learned with the release of Windows 8 and Server 2012.

With Server 2025, we find a great compromise between the traditional familiarity of the prior versions of Windows and the new benefits that come with rounded edges and touch-friendly screens, which will be used more and more often as we move toward the future of Windows-based devices. In the next chapter, we’ll start putting rubber to the road as we install and begin managing Windows Server 2025.