There's pretty big news for Windows Server administrators. After some delays, starting with Windows Server 2025 and its latest October Cumulative update, the operating system will finally support native NVMe I/O, marking the end of an era where requests were translated to SCSI bus commands, even with the highest-powered drives.
The feature has now reached General Availability and is built right into the OS, though it's not enabled by default. Sysadmins willing to take the plunge only have to tweak a registry key, or add a group policy MSI, and they can enjoy up to 80% higher IOPS and up to 45% lower CPU utilization under a high I/O load. This should be a shot in the arm for scenarios involving high-performance file serving, virtualization, AI and ML workloads, and databases.
