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In 2024, Microsoft began developing hotpatching technology, a feature that allows Windows Server 2025 systems to apply cumulative updates without necessitating a reboot. While it does not eliminate the need for restarts entirely, it significantly reduces them to a maximum of four times per year—once per quarter.
This hotpatching capability is now on the cusp of being fully rolled out. Microsoft has announced that, starting July 1, 2025, all Windows Server 2025 systems will support this functionality. However, enterprises wishing to utilize it must subscribe to a monthly payment plan, with fees calculated based on the number of CPU cores.
Basing licensing fees on CPU core count is a common practice within the data center industry—the more CPU cores a server possesses, the higher the licensing cost. For software developers like Microsoft, this licensing model offers a lucrative revenue stream.
The subscription fee for the Windows Server 2025 hotpatching feature is set at $1.5 per core per month.
For example, an AMD EPYC 9554 processor, with 64 cores and 128 threads, would incur a cost of $96 per month (64 cores × $1.5). A dual-socket server equipped with two such processors would see the fee doubled to $192 monthly.
For enterprises, the primary advantage of hotpatching lies in minimizing system reboots, thereby preventing business disruptions. Nevertheless, the associated costs are not insignificant—particularly for servers with over 100 cores. To manage expenses, companies may opt to subscribe to hotpatching services only for critical servers, rather than across their entire infrastructure.
To further incentivize the adoption of Microsoft Azure cloud services, Windows Server editions running on Azure will continue to receive hotpatching capabilities free of charge, eliminating the need for additional subscription payments.
Additionally, enterprises currently enrolled in the hotpatching preview program must manually cancel their enrollment by June 30, or they will automatically begin incurring subscription fees. It is important to note that this feature is available exclusively for the Standard and Datacenter editions of Windows Server 2025.
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