Blog Post
Announcing Native NVMe in Windows Server 2025: Ushering in a New Era of Storage Performance
It's almost 2026, and Microsoft is not following in Linux's footsteps by adopting NVMe natively on all systems.
It should be standard on Windows 11, especially servers and for those who play games on home and pro editions.
Microsoft has problems maintaining support for legacy technologies and forgetting to adopt new technologies, while hardware evolves every day.
Direct X 12 for example, doesn't get a single update for years.
DX12 is constantly evolving - ray and path tracing, auto system rendering, work graphs, shader delivery, cooperative vectors... just because the major version number hasn't changed doesn't mean critically important features are not being added & refined. The point of this article is about evolution. As I'm responsible for thousands of endpoints, I laud the idea of an opt-in to the native nvme driver and to have the ability to test it out before real-world deployments. I'd complain loudly if this was suddenly enabled across billions of endpoints worldwide. It needs shakedown time. I've already identified apps that don't work with it enabled. MS has to lay the foundation and let software & hardware vendors to catch up.
- thezalnarsDec 27, 2025Copper Contributor
Linux OSes break app compatibility every two days, but when they implemented NVMe there were no issues.
- Karl-WEDec 24, 2025MVP
Apps don't work - could you share a list here and to the feedback email please?