MPECS Inc. Blog: SBS 2008 - Physical and Virtual Product Keys

Wednesday, 15 October 2008

SBS 2008 - Physical and Virtual Product Keys

For those of us on TechNet, MSDN, or soon to be Open Licensing, we will see that there are two sets of product keys we are given to activate the server:

Physical: This product key will be bound to the physical hardware the server OS resides on.
Virtual: This product key will activate the OS, but not require reactivation if memory, CPU cores, or any other virtual hardware configuration is changed.

Microsoft KB949748: Description of the changes that were made to the product activation process for Windows Server 2008 in a virtual operating system environment.

The virtual product keys apply to server OSs only and will be provided with Fully Packaged Product and OEM product. In the case of OEM product, there are some restrictions on preinstallation.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: hmm, should we just use the virtual key for all installations, to have more flexibility in case of hardware failure?; 15 October, 2008 22:04
Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...: Marco,

Depending on the licensing setup your failed SBS is under, you could reuse the existing SBS key if you were say recovering to the existing server after a repair.

There are a lot of variables to be counted before we could be 100% just how to proceed with the recovery.

Thanks for the comment,

Philip; 27 October, 2008 23:14
Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...: Marco,

Further to this point: MS KB 949748: Description of the changes that were made to the product activation process for Windows Server 2008 in a virtual operating system environment.

Philip; 29 October, 2008 00:42