This key will activate Windows Server 2012, Windows 8, and client and server operating systems all the way down to Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. It does require installing an update mentioned in the following article:Īfterwards, you then need to install the Windows Server 2012 volume license key and activate it. For those of you that have KMS hosts setup to support earlier versions of the operating system, you can still use these to activate Windows 8 and Windows Server 2008 R2 as long as the KMS host is running on a Windows 2008 R2 or later operating system.

Prior to Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Very little has changed for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. Here’s a demo that shows how to do this: If DDNS is enabled, the KMS host automatically creates an SRV record in DNS so that KMS clients can locate a KMS host and activate against it.

The KMS host can be cohosted on a VM or physical server of standalone by itself. To setup the KMS host, we use the command line interface slmgr.vbs to install the KMS host key. Activation lasts for 180 days and attempts to renew with the KMS host every 7 days by default. By count, we mean that this number of unique KMS clients had to have contacted the KMS host prior to the KMS host activating all KMS clients. These can be any combination of client or server operating systems. In order to activate client operating systems, it requires a count of 25 or server operating systems require a count of 5. But if you’re curious about Office 2013, look here:

Since I’m not an “Office” person, I’ll focus on the Windows side of things. KMS is a service that activates volume license versions of Windows Vista and later as well as Office 2010 and later. I won’t bore you with too many details as there’s a ton of good information out there on volume activation using KMS. Just very different from Windows Server 2003. I can generally bring an admin up to speed in under an hour, if they don’t want to read the documentation (located on TechNet: ). I still receive TONS of questions on KMS even though it has been around for quite some time now. If you're looking to add support to your KMS hosts for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2, you need to install the update mentioned in the following article: First published on TechNet on Feb 04, 2013

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