KMS autodiscovery with multiple Activation Servers

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Microsoft currently have two KMS clients: one in the Operating System (since Windows Vista and Server 2008) and most recently one for Office 2010. The environment I’m working in already has an existing KMS server which is registred in DNS and has a channel B activation key installed and managed by the organisations Systems Integrator (SI). As part of our project we planned to implement a second KMS server with the Windows 7 and Office 2010 activation keys installed which would be managed by a different team within the organisation.

As per the TechNet page on choosing the right volumen license key, each channel group activates the downstream group:

Knowing that the channel B key would activate the client OS but not Office, the question I had was:

“How would the KMS clients handle having two activation servers with different activation keys?”

I had a dicussion on a mailing list at Microsoft and was pleased to find out that the client’s autodiscovery behaved as I hoped they would which is:

  • The client queries DNS for a list of KMS servers;
  • The client works through the list of servers until it can successfuly activate; and
  • The successful activation server is cached and tried first on next activation.

    • This was good to confirm as there was concern that the KMS client would activate the OS agianst one server and then fail to activate Office and leave the workstation in an undesireable state.

    DNS was configured using the steps outlined in the Volume Activation Deployment Guide and tested using:

    nslookup
    set q=srv
    ._VLMVS._TCP

    Both KMS servers were returned.

    A quick check of the respective KMS clients (on 64-bit Win7) using the following:

    cscript "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\ospp.vbs" /dhistorykms
    csscript "C:\Windows\System32\slmgr.vbs" /dli

    confirmed that activation was working as expected.

    #Winning ;-)

    Microsoft Scripting Games 2010

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    It’s that time of year again .. yes, the Microsoft Scripting Games are nearly upon us. With less than a week to go I thought it time to take a closer look at what it’s all about.

    The games run from April 26th through to May 7th. There are two categories, VBScript or PowerShell, and two levels of difficulty: Beginner and Advanced.

    Next Steps:
    1. Sign up for the games
    2. Take a look at the Study Guide if you want to prepare.
    3. Checkout the extra prizes that you can win if you sign up to the Australian Team
    4. Grab the Badge
    5. Spread the word and join in using the Twitter hash tag #2010sg and if you feel lke it use the Twibbon
    6. Script and have some fun!!

    There’s also a FAQ and a forum to hang out in.

    Good luck everyone :-)

    Perth User Group – March 2010

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    There’s a couple of User Group items I want to talk about this month. Obviously there is the PowerShell UG Australia Script club for Perth next Thursday 18th March, as well as a Presentation session for Brisbane next week on the 16th. Details of both can be found on the PowerShell User Group Australia web site.

    I also want to raise the visibility on the first Perth Infrastructure Group (PIGAU) for 2010 tomorrow night (Thursday 11th). We have Jeff Alexander in town, and he’ll be presenting on Windows Server 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services

    What we will cover:
    - RemoteApp and Remote Desktop
    - Remote Desktop Services (RDS) Improvements
    - Using RDS to Connect to Virtual Machines
    Demonstrations in this Session:
    - Using Remote Desktop Services Remote Programs
    - Using Remote Desktop Services Web Access
    - Configuring Remote Desktop Services Gateway
    - Connecting RemoteApp Through Remote Desktop Connection Broker to a Hyper-V VM

    So if you’re in Perth, and free Thursday night come along!