Your KMS count will increase almost immediately when KMS clients renew their activations and find your new KMS host or if you can force it by using VAMT, multi-selecting a bunch of clients, and tell them to activate in which case they’ll immediately go and renew their activation interval with the new KMS host.
You don’t need to worry about your KMS count (remember we need a count of 25 for Windows servers/clients and a count of 5 for Office clients before we’ll activate). If you are prepared, the process takes all of 5 minutes, 30 minutes max. Your organization is not going to go up in smoke if your KMS host is unavailable for a short period of time.īut it is necessary (unless you’re on Windows 8/Windows Server 2012 and later and Office 2013 and later and can use Active Directory Based Activation). There is no way to automatically transfer your KMS role along with the products its activating to another server. How do I migrate my KMS host from Windows Server 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2012 R2? I use KMS for volume activation of Microsoft products. In short, the request goes something like this: I’m receiving a lot of requests for assistance here lately around KMS. To test activation, simply restart an un-activated client.First published on TechNet on Nov 09, 2015 Under Product Key management, you will need to select the type of initial server activation.Ĭontinue through the wizard until you receive confirmation that activation has successfully been enabled.
Activate windows 2012 r2 kms key install#
As a note, you can install a single Windows Server 2012 R2 KMS key to activate client and server operating systems. Install your KMS host key and provide a unique name for this value. Select Active Directory Based Activation as the Activation type.Ĭonfiguring Active Directory Based Activation Next, launch the newly installed Volume Activation tools. Select the Volume Activation Services role and finish the wizard. Continue through the wizard until you reach the Server Roles selection. First, head to the Add Roles and Features wizard. Got 15 minutes and a Windows 2012 R2 Server? Great – let’s set up ADBA! This guide will assume that you are starting from scratch. Your schema version will need to be updated to Windows Server 2012 at least.
Activate windows 2012 r2 kms key upgrade#
Surprisingly, you can take advantage of ADBA without needing to upgrade your domain controllers. If your KMS host is running (or upgraded) to Windows Server 2012 R2, you can even have both roles on the same machine. You can continue to use KMS to activate your older clients and use ADBA for your newer clients. It also supports Office 2013 activation.īut here is the good news – KMS and ADBA are not mutually exclusive.
It can only activate Windows 8+ and Windows Server 2012+ operating systems. ADBA requirements ^ĪDBA does have a minimal OS requirement.
A onetime configuration takes care of your entire AD infrastructure. ADBA, on the other hand, is a forest wide single instance activation method. If you manage a large multi-domain environment, KMS requires more administrative effort. If clients can’t contact AD, you probably have bigger problems.įinally, KMS configuration is domain specific. As long as a client can contact Active Directory, that client can activate. By using ADSI, you can view these activation objects.īecause the activation objects are stored within Active Directory, they are no longer node specific. ADBA stores its activation objects within Active Directory.
If your KMS host goes down, clients will be unable to activate. With KMS, your activation objects is directly linked to your KMS host. In my opinion, activations are one of those things. There are some things more suitable to a GUI than command line. If you are currently running KMS on a 2008 R2 machine or below, this will probably be a very welcome change. ADBA is a GUI based activation mechanism.