When Windows Product Activation (WPA) was means to prevent piracy, it was received with mixed reviews. Other than Microsoft itself, hardly anyone was in favor of it.

Companies were not in favor of this new product activation feature because they were unsure of how it would affect their organization. They were used to having a single install disk without any restrictions, and each individual company had its own speci ment needs.

Home users were also concerned about the implications of the new activation feature.

Would their private information be sent to Microsoft? Would Microsoft monitor their

activity? How much change in hardware was required to trigger a new activation?

The initial primary focus for Windows Activation was to discourage casual copying of Microsoftand lets a friend install it on their machine. When Product Activation, what Windows Activation was then called, was introduced, it was reported that 50 percent of all piracy was casual copying.

Over time, Windows Activation has gained not so much an acceptance but more of a tol- erance by users. Microsoft has continued to repeople, and in general, people have started to purchase their own copies of software.

KMS has the following prerequisites:

The KMS host must have the appropriate volume license.

Machines on your network or KMS clients must also have the proper volume license.

Configuring Microsoft Windows Activation 383

KMS clients need access to the KMS server. The KMS server uses TCP port 1688 by default.

Applications and services logs to be configured to handle the volume in your organiza- tion. Log sizes can be set in the Log Properties dialog box.

When planning to use a KMS host on your network, it is good to keep a few things in mind:

KMS host changes The KMS host has the same rules as all other computers. If major

hardware changes are made to the KMS server or it is on a virtual machine and is trans- ferred to another computer, the KMS host will be required to reactivate with Microsoft.

KMS key It is best to use the KMS key from the highest product group that your company

has licensed.

Volume licenses If you upgrade your product group or purchase a new volume license,

you need to upgrade your existing KMS host.

KMS requires a minimum number of physical servers on the network before it will start activating client machines. This is called the activation threshold. The thresholds are as follows:

Windows Vista Requires 25 physical computers

Windows Server 2008 Requires 5 servers

How do the requirement thresholds work? A KMS host will count the number of physical computers that are requesting activation. The count is a combination of both Windows Vista machines and Windows Server 2008.

For example, a company has 10 computers. Of the 10 computers, 8 are Windows Vista and 2 are Windows Server 2008. When these computers request activation, they are given an activation number, so the next two computers are given numbers 2 and 3. The fourth computer is Windows Server 2008 and is given number 4, but none of the computers can be activated yet. The next com- puter to request activation is another Windows Server 2008 computer, and because it gets a number 5, it activates; however, the Vista computer will not activate until the number of total physical computers has reached 25. Therefore, this company has enough computers to reach the activation threshold for Windows Server 2008 but not for Windows Vista.

Once the thresholds are met, the KMS server will activate virtual machines, but until the numbers are reached, the virtual machines will not count toward the total number of machines needed to cross the threshold. It is thus important to have met these thresholds before the expiration period so that the computers can be activated.

The grace period for meeting the KMS threshold requirements for all editions of Windows Vista is 30 days. The grace period for Windows Server 2008 is 60 days.