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25th Sinergija conference in Belgrade, Serbia
During the last week of November 2025 I attended Sinergija, Southeast Europe’s premier business and technology conference. This year Sinergija had already it’s 25th anniversary and was running on November 26-27 at Belgrade’s SAVA CENTAR. The event, themed “Let’s AI!”, focused on artificial intelligence, cloud technologies, and digital transformation.
It was my pleasure to be chosen as one of the speakers. Although my presentation was in the last time slot on day two, I still had a nice big group joining me. I was presenting one of the few infrastructure related topics: Advanced usage of Azure Virtual Desktop.
If you are interested in what I was talking about, you can find my slides below.
Big thank you to the Sinergija team, speakers, partners and all the attendees that joined to make this conference a success.
30th NT CONFERENCE in Portorož, Slovenia
From 22nd until 24th of September there was a business and technology conference in Slovenia. It had a lot of great presenters sharing their experience, technical knowledge and views in many different topics. I imagine anybody that wanted to was able to find something interesting to go and learn about. Topics covered were raging from Linux to Windows, from security to development, from on-prem to the cloud, from AI and far beyond.
It was my pleasure to be chosen as one of the speakers on the 30th anniversary of the NT conference. This year I submitted three presentations and all there were confirmed for delivery:
- Je Azure Arc res lahko brezplačen? (When/how can Azure Arc be free?)
- Napredna uporaba Azure Virtual Desktop okolij (Advanced usage of Azure Virtual Desktop)
- Azure Virtual Desktop vs Windows 365
If you want to learn more about the topics covered at the conference, you can head to the https://www.ntk.si/.
If you are interested in what I was talking about, you can find my slides below.
Hope to see you next year at the 31st NT conference.
Windows Server management with Azure Arc now for free for SA customers
Microsoft has recently announced a significant enhancement to Azure Arc licensing. Beginning in November, all customers using Microsoft Azure with Windows Server licenses, whether they are under active Software Assurance or active subscription licenses, will have the opportunity to enable Azure Arc capabilities at no additional cost. This positive change aims to facilitate greater access to Azure Arc features, allowing organizations to manage and govern their on-premises servers alongside Azure resources more effectively.
Revolutionizing Windows Server Management with Azure Arc
In today’s digital landscape, managing hybrid environments effectively is crucial for businesses. With the advent of Azure Arc, organizations can extend Azure management capabilities directly to their Windows Server instances, enhancing operational efficiency and governance. This innovative approach benefits customers who hold Windows Server licenses with active Software Assurance or subscription licensing, offering powerful tools designed to streamline server management and boost productivity.
Azure Arc-enabled servers support a suite of rich features, including Azure Update Manager, Azure Change Tracking and Inventory, and Azure Machine Configuration. Collectively, these tools empower businesses to assess update statuses, monitor system changes, and configure machine properties seamlessly. Significantly, these capabilities facilitate better visibility into compliance and inventory, ensuring organizations remain resilient and up-to-date in a rapidly evolving IT environment.
Key Features That Elevate Server Management
With the integration of Azure Arc, users can benefit from advanced services tailored for Windows Server 2025. Among these are the Windows Admin Center in Azure, Remote Support, and Network HUD. These enhancements allow administrators to manage hybrid machines securely and efficiently from anywhere, eliminating the need for cumbersome VPNs or direct inbound connections. This flexibility translates into reduced downtime and improved responsiveness towards issues, ultimately contributing to overall business continuity.
Furthermore, tools such as the Best Practices Assessment and Azure Site Recovery Configuration offer valuable analytics and insights, guiding users in optimizing performance and guaranteeing data resilience. Through these robust features, Azure Arc not only simplifies management tasks but also instills confidence that critical workloads remain protected and operational, even in times of disruption.
Maximizing Benefits and Ensuring Eligibility
It is essential for organizations wishing to leverage these tools to attestation their Azure Arc-enabled servers or enroll in Windows Server pay-as-you-go plans, ensuring access without incurring additional costs. Benefits such as Azure Update Manager and Change Tracking are part of this package, although users must remain aware of potential data ingestion costs associated with Log Analytics workspaces.
Moreover, businesses must adhere to specific requirements, including maintaining updated Connected Machine Agent versions and ensuring proper licensing. By navigating these stipulations effectively, organizations can fully unlock the potential of Azure Arc, paving the way for a transformative server management experience that aligns with modern operational needs.
Upon attestation, customers receive access to the following at no additional cost beyond networking, storage, and log ingestion:
- Azure Update Manager (Windows Server 2012 and above)
- Azure Change Tracking and Inventory (Windows Server 2012 and above)
- Azure Machine Configuration (Windows Server 2012 and above)
- Windows Admin Center in Azure for Arc (Windows Server 2025 only)
- Remote Support (Windows Server 2025 only)
- Network HUD (Windows Server 2025 only)
- Best Practices Assessment (Windows Server 2025 only)
- Azure Site Recovery Configuration (Windows Server 2025 only)
More information about Azure Arc and new Windows Server Management features is available at: Windows Server Management enabled by Azure Arc (video review by John Savill: FREE Azure Services for NON-Azure Windows Servers Covered by SA Powered by Azure Arc!).
Windows Server 2025 – Hotpatching and WSUS
Windows Server 2025 GA is around the corner and with it more and more features are getting finalized. To keep up with the latest we should also check the list of features removed or no longer developed starting with Windows Server 2025.
Just few days ago Microsoft announced they are planning the deprecation of Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). For now, they are going to preserve the current WSUS functionality (in Windows Server 2025) and they will also continue to publish existing and new updates through the WSUS channel.
Due to more mobile workforce and probably also due to general cloud adoption, more and more of the updating services are moving to the cloud. For client patching, Windows Autopatch has been available for a while now and it alows us to automate Windows, Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise, Microsoft Edge, and Microsoft Teams updates from the cloud (requires Intune and Entra ID joined devices). It does require one of the cloud subscriptions for the devices but in combination with Delivery Optimization it can bring us some nice bandwidth optimizations (probably one of the core reasons for typical WSUS deployment). We can even monitor DO usage for free in Azure Monitor or directly on the device with native PowerShell commands (Get-DeliveryOptimizationStatus, Enable-DeliveryOptimizationVerboseLogs,…). If we want to get more detailed DO usage report from the same data, we can also look at a free solution like this one (based on Power BI template). To go even deeper with DO analysis, we can follow along this nice Deep Dive guide (including setup in Configuration Manager) including detailed configuration guide.
Windows Autopatch is used for client update management. If we want to manage server updates from the cloud, we do have Azure hosted solution for that – Azure Update Manager. In combination with Windows Server Hotpatch we can get some nice update management capabilities and patching optimizations that we can use with our server infrastructure.
We can use Azure Update Manager (AUM) to us help manage and govern updates for all our machines (Windows and Linux servers) in Azure, on-premises, and on other cloud platforms from a single dashboard. Some of the nice to have features of AUM are: on-demand check for updates and/or deploy security and critical updates, enable periodic assessment to check for updates, customer-defined maintenance schedules, hotpatching,… Azure Update Manager pricing page tells us that we pay per day when server is connected to Arc and managed by Azure Update Manager.
Windows Server Hotpatch has been around for a while now but it had some major limits – probably the biggest one being that it only worked on Windows Server Datacenter: Azure Edition virtual machines either on Azure or Azure Stack HCI platform. The big thing that we get with hotpatching is a monthly Windows Server update without a required reboot at the end. It works by patching the in-memory code of running processes without the need to restart the process. Just recently hotpatching got an improvement – now it works on any Azure Arc-enabled Windows Sever 2025 Datacenter and Standard.
If we look at the Azure Arc pricing, we can see that we get some of the options for free (inventory, remote management with Windows Admin Cener (WAC) including remote RDP, SSH and PowerShell,…) as soon as the agent gets connected to our Azure subscription. Some of the Azure services that can be enabled as an add-on to Azure Arc: Azure Update Manager, Azure Policy guest configuration, Azure Monitor, Microsoft Defender for Cloud etc.
If we want to test all this features before we have to deploy them in our production environments, we can use evaluation versions of the required products:
- Windows Server 2025 Preview (download)
- Windows 11 Enterprise (download)
- Microsoft 365 Business Premium Trial (comes with Entra ID P1, Intune P1,…; more info)
- Azure free account (200 USD credit)
Microsoft news in June 2019
So far June has been busy month for Microsoft. Few of the recent announcements I want you to know about:
– Microsoft Azure Bastion – private and fully managed RDP and SSH access to virtual machines (blog)
– AaronLocker performance and feature updates (blog)
– Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2019 available for download (ISO)
– Sysinternals updates
– Sysmon v10.01 – adds support for DNS query logging
– Autoruns for Windows v13.95 – adds support for user Shell folders redirections
– Windows To Go (WTG) – Feature Deprecation in Windows 10 1903
– PowerShell v7.0.0-preview.1 Release
– Azure Multi-Factor Authentication Server goes Cloud-Only – As of July 1, 2019, Microsoft will no longer offer MFA Server for new deployments.
– Microsoft Edge Insider Channels receives update on Canary channel – brings preview for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and macOS (*)
– SCCM Client extension for Windows Admin Center (more info) (*)
– Windows Insider Lab Kit (Olympia v2) updated to version 5.7 (*)
– Windows and Office Deployment Lab Kit updated to version 1903 (*)
* added after initial blog post
Going down the IT rabbit hole 