Microsoft Implements Native NVMe Driver in Windows Server 2025

Published on January 07, 2026 | Translated from Spanish
Conceptual illustration showing the Windows Server 2025 logo next to a high-speed NVMe storage drive, with arrows indicating a direct and efficient data flow, eliminating an intermediate SCSI emulation layer.

Microsoft Implements Native NVMe Driver in Windows Server 2025

Microsoft has announced a fundamental update for its server operating system. Windows Server 2025 will finally integrate a native driver for NVMe drives, leaving behind the SCSI emulation layer that has been used for fourteen years. This change allows the OS to communicate directly with the hardware, promising to optimize performance significantly. 🚀

Farewell to Historical SCSI Emulation

The storage architecture in Windows has always been based on the SCSI model, even for devices using the more modern NVMe protocol. This emulation added unnecessary overhead in processing and limited the bandwidth that these fast drives could achieve. The new stack, called Storage Class Memory-NVMe (SCM-NVMe), interacts directly with the physical controller without intermediaries.

Key advantages of the new SCM-NVMe stack:
  • Eliminates command translation, reducing the load on the CPU.
  • Allows exploiting the full potential of PCIe 5.0 drives and future generations.
  • Provides a more direct and efficient data path for I/O operations.
The new SCM-NVMe stack interacts directly with the physical controller, allowing the full potential of PCIe 5.0 drives and future ones to be exploited.

Tangible Improvements in Performance and Efficiency

By avoiding the emulation layer, the system achieves two main objectives: reducing latency and freeing up processor resources. This translates into superior performance in transfers, both sequential and random, especially under intensive workloads.

Impact in professional environments:
  • Servers can handle more I/O operations per second (IOPS) with the same hardware.
  • Energy efficiency is improved by requiring fewer CPU cycles for the same tasks.
  • Increases the workload density that a single server can support, benefiting data centers and database servers.

A Long-Awaited Change

Although NVMe technology has been on the market for over a decade, its native integration into Windows servers has been long awaited. This step eliminates a persistent architectural bottleneck, allowing modern storage infrastructure to perform according to its design specifications. The technical community has been anticipating this advancement for years to optimize high-performance environments. 💻