i am just curious as to what the best way to handle the activation is going to be. I want to run an AD machine and maybe 3 more virtualized 2008 r2 servers and a handfull of windows xp and 7 machines. I will be virtualizing the servers on one machine and the windows machines on another. I don't want to have to redo licensing or use the whole slmgr.vbs /renew every 10 days. and i don't think there is enough machines to use a KMS host. Any ideas? Thanks. Reply Quote

Hi, I would recommend using KMS for this, KMS will work for your needs as there is no minimum to my knowledge. KMS will license for 180 days and as per Microsoft recommendations, a dual KMS server is advised for failover reasons. Hope it helps! Martin If you find my information useful, please rate it. :-)

I will look into KMS more. I was under the impression that there was a minimum of 5 servers or 25 workstations for KMS to hand out licenses...

Hello, please see: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd981009.aspx for Test environments also.Best regards Meinolf Weber MVP, MCP, MCTS Microsoft MVP - Directory Services My Blog: http://msmvps.com/blogs/mweber/ Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights.

Hi Meinolf, Yes. I have read this document. This is where I realized that there was a minimum requirment for using KMS licensing. Since I am only planning on having at max, 8 - 9 servers/workstations in this environment you can see I won't be above the minimum requirements. I have a hard time understanding why a "test" environment that will not be used in production needs to be activated with paid licenses. Especially when we are already paying for many many licenses. We just havn't been using the KMS host method. And I was hoping to not even give this environment network or internet access. Strictly mock deployment.