Everyone loves to talk about "cloud-native".
Almost nobody talks about the Windows Server fleet quietly holding production together underneath it.
More than ten years ago, I deployed my first .NET app by RDP-ing into a Windows Server, copying a publish folder, and recycling an IIS app pool by hand. I thought I'd leave that world behind once I got "serious".
I didn't. Almost nobody does.
The systems I work on today, as a senior engineer and architect, are hybrid by default. Active Directory still signs users in. Hyper-V still runs the VMs. File services, PKI, line-of-business apps, and increasingly on-prem AI workloads still sit on Windows Server. The interesting engineering question in 2026 isn't "cloud or on-prem?" It's "how do I operate consistently across both?"
That's the exact frame of Windows Server Summit 2026.
The agenda is super practical:
→ Windows Server 2025 in practice - hotpatching, clustering, native NVMe, networking
→ Azure Arc for Servers - one control plane across on-prem, edge, and cloud
→ The future of Hyper-V - performance, scale, resiliency, replica direction
→ PKI AD modernization - hybrid identity and post-quantum readiness
→ AI workloads on Windows Server - AI-ready infrastructure, done honestly
If you own, design, or modernize server estates, this is worth the calendar block.
Save your spot →
fandf.co/3O7m5ir
Two things I appreciate about how it's run: sessions go on demand shortly after airing, and live Q&A stays open the whole week. So even if your calendar is brutal, you still get most of the value.
A huge thank you to
@msdev for collaborating with me on this post.