Hello,We have a customer that has installed a kms host key on 6 servers, so now they have 6 KMS hosts running. They have contacted us because they realize they have done something wrong. I am new to kms and have been reading on technet for serveral hours now, but still some thing are unclear to meIf I understand correctly deployment of kms should be simple and straightforwardThe easiest way (read to support the most kms clients) is to install a 2008 R2 server with a 2008 R2 host key. This will support vista, 7, 2003, 2008 and 2008R2 kms systems and enable them to activate. Is this correct ?I install a windows vista machine or windows 7 machine using a volume license product key. After installation the activation will occur automatically against the kms host and no extra manual steps are needed. I do not need to install/add a kms client key on the vista or windows 7 machine. Is this correct ?Can i deactivate systems that were actived directly (before deployment of the kms host) with Microsoft and reactivate them with the kms host ?s it possible to uninstall a kms host and thus making it a regular kms client (to reduce the number of kms hosts from 6 to 2) ?Thanks in advanceKind RegardsStijn Delen

Hiya, We spend quite alot of time in the beginning messing about with this. We did the exact same thing, installed quite a few with KMS host keys.Lets see if I catch all your questions.1: You dont need Microsoft in order to deactivate the hosts and you can reactivate them using the KMS host.2: Yes, same as above.You should look for Microsoft Volume Actvation Tool. In order to get it to work with R2 you need some components from Windows AIK 2.0 installed also..Our KMS host is a Windows 2008 SP2 not R2 as we had quite an issue getting that to work. Altho we dont have any problems activating 2008 R2 servers, as long as we have the updated tool.Hopefully that should get you on the way :)

Sdelenyes you only need 1 or 2 KMS hosts depending on how large the client is.the KMS key only goes on the 2 servers all othere server ans and clients find the KMS servers by DNS SRV record which you have to create manually sometimes.Also on the KMS servers please make sure the inbound KMS rules are open.that shouls do you OK.William Bressette, Network Architect, Horn IT Solutions, http://wpjsplace.spaces.live.com/blog