Uhmmm , Imagine about the scenario building up new DC Virtualization Infra having good number of physical Hosts and hundreds of Virtual Machine .. Yep Windows Server Virtual machine ....
When it comes to windows server's , usually the first and foremost activity to perform -- Windows Activation's.. .. Get the machine on internet , Enter the product key and it's done .. Easy to say but the times when building up new infra , No Proper connectivity and so on so on challanges.. Now What call MS call center for activation ! Obvio Not calling MS for activation 500 Machines.. can you imagine. And yes sometimes your datacenter is in remote location too !
Well Windows Server 2012 R2 has something new to do here .. To ease the pain for Windows activation for virtual machines.. Its the AVMA (Automatic Virtual Machine Activation) ...
Yes!! Without AVMA you can Hyper-V virtual machines activated automatically .. No Internet no MS phone calls .. Well controlling the excitement it comes up with some limitation.. lets look at those first
Supported Virtualization Host OS - Hyper-V Host
- Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter Edition only!
Supported Guest OS - Virtual Machine OS
- Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter , Standard & Essential Edition Only !! Yeah thats it .. No previous version
Well How to Use AVMA
1. Build up the Hyper-V Host , Yes .. Activate it :D . the Virtualization host has to activated prior to use AVMA
2. Create the VM
3. Setup the VM with AVMA Key , what is AVMA Key , the Automatic activation key for guest VM - can be found on this technet link Use below command for AVMA Setup
slmgr /ipk <AVMA_key>
4. Thats it .. VM is activated
we can also embed AVMA in out master image for deployment as well!! AVMA offers multiple other features too including Tracking , Events and so on !! Below is the technet link for the same.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn303421.aspx
Thank you!
