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Server 2025 NAS vs. Server 2022 NAS Analysis Performance
Windows Server 2025 was announced on January 26, 2024 and it is now available as a public preview version. The purpose of this review is to compare the performance of the Windows Server 2025 network attached storage (NAS) to the performance of Windows Server 2022 NAS during multi-threaded disk space analysis operations. For this review, we have used an off-the-shelf server with a 12-core Intel CPU, 16 GB of system memory and a fast NVMe SSD disk. The first time, all the tests were performed on a freshly installed and fully updated version of the Windows Server 2022 operating system. The second time, all the tests were performed on a freshly installed and fully updated version of the newly released Windows Server 2025 operating system. Both times the testes were performed in the same order using exactly the same data set containing 450,000 small files with the average file size 32 KB, 50,000 medium-sized files with the average file size 4 MB and 1,000 large files with the average file size 100 MB. The performance tests were performed via a local Gigabit Ethernet network using the DiskBoss file management solution, which is capable of performing many different types of disk space analysis, file classification, file search, file synchronization and file management operations using multiple, parallel threads fully utilizing modern multi-core CPUs. In order to better understand how effectively each NAS server is using the system resources, we have used the SysGauge system monitoring utility to monitor the NAS request rate, NAS transfer rate, NAS pending requests, CPU usage, context switch rate and the system call rate during each test. 
According to the disk space analysis benchmark results, with a single disk space analysis thread, the performance of the Server 2022 NAS reached up to 12,600 Files/Sec, while the performance of the Server 2025 NAS reached up to 9,500 Files/Sec, which represents a very significant 30% degradation for this specific benchmark. With 8 parallel disk space analysis threads, the performance of the Server 2022 NAS reached up to 75,600 Files/Sec, while the performance of the Server 2025 NAS reached up to 74,400 Files/Sec, which represents a minor 1.5% degradation for this specific benchmark. 
According to the NAS request rate monitoring results, with a single disk space analysis thread, for the Server 2022 NAS the measured average NAS request rate was 4,186 Requests/Sec, while for the Server 2025 NAS the measured average NAS request rate was 3,355 Requests/Sec. With 8 parallel disk space analysis threads, for the Server 2022 NAS the measured average NAS request rate was 18,180 Requests/Sec, while for the Server 2025 NAS the measured average NAS request rate was 18,280 Requests/Sec. According to the NAS maximum pending requests monitoring results, with a single disk space analysis thread, for the Server 2022 NAS the measured maximum number of pending NAS requests was 2, while for the Server 2025 NAS the measured maximum number of pending NAS requests was 3. With 8 parallel disk space analysis threads, for the Server 2022 NAS the measured maximum number of pending NAS requests raised to 12, while for the Server 2025 NAS the measured maximum number of pending NAS requests raised to 13. 
In general, during almost all tests, the maximum number of pending NAS requests was higher for the Windows Server 2025, which means that the newly released Server 2025 more easily gets to the point when it cannot handle all the incoming NAS requests and client machines will need to wait more until the NAS server will respond. According to the CPU usage monitoring results, with a single disk space analysis thread, for the Windows Server 2022 the average measured CPU usage was 16.4%, while for the Windows Server 2025 the average measured CPU usage was 22.6%. With 8 parallel disk space analysis threads, for the Windows Server 2022 the measured average CPU usage was 16.8%, while for the Windows Server 2025 the measured average CPU usage was 20.6%. 
In general, during all benchmarks, the CPU usage of the Windows Server 2025 was higher while performing the same tasks. At the same time, the performance of the Windows Server 2025 NAS was lower or equal to the Windows Server 2022, which means that the newly released Windows Server 2025 is less efficient and uses more system resources than the Windows Server 2022. 
* This review was prepared for information purposes only and we strongly recommend to test the performance of DiskBoss file management operations on your specific hardware platform and with your specific data sets.
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