If you have any kind of a complex environment, you'll find volume activation to be very frustrating indeed:
1. The KMS service can't support more than one key, so if you have Longhorn VL clients in your environment you have to put up a second KMS infrastructure for them. 2. You can't (rather, shouldn't) use autodiscovery If you do have both LH and Vista. The KMS client can't distinguish between a KMS with LH and a KMS with Vista, and there's nothing in the client that says "oh, I hit a KMS but it has the wrong key so try again immediately" so ~50% of a client's activation attempts will fail. 3. Autodiscovery isn't practical if you have more than a few forests that don't trust the forest your KMS is in. All admins of the untrusted forests must manually register the _vlmcs record in their forest to find the KMS. ...the list goes on. (I haven't even mentioned the practical aspects of volume activation in a lab or firewalled environment.) It's not a fully-baked solution. Depending on your environment, it might be easier to scrap the whole autodiscovery, create a DNS CNAME with a couple of KMS behind it, stuff the FQDN in the KMS client's registry if you have a standard build, and fugeddaboutit :-). On 12/4/06, Laura A. Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
KMS runs on Vista (now), will run on Longhorn when Longhorn is released, and will also run on Win2K3 as soon as we finish making the Win2K3 install. :-) Laura > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > Susan Bradley, CPA aka Ebitz - SBS Rocks [MVP] > Sent: Monday, December 04, 2006 1:12 PM > To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org > Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] OT: Vista Activation and KMS > > Nope, I've done it web based. At the present time there are > two kinds of keycodes up on MVLS.. one that wants a KMS, the > other that will phone home to Redmond automatically. > > Have your MVLS folks request the other type of key is my > understanding how this will work for now. The KMS type won't > be out until Longhorn. > > KMS activations will have to phone home to your servers twice a year. > > Brian Cline wrote: > > > > I was testing out the RTM of Vista Enterprise last night > and noticed I > > didn't have to enter a key at any point during the install. When > > Windows tried to activate, it told me there was a DNS error, so I > > suspected it looks for a local activation server by default. Sure > > enough, in the DNS cache was a lookup for a nonexistent > > _vlmcs._tcp.domain.com. Upon further research, it appears Microsoft > > has not released KMS yet, and I couldn't find any option to > activate > > directly with Microsoft. For the moment, is telephone > activation the > > only option? > > > > Brian Cline, Applications Developer > > Department of Information Technology > > G&P Trucking Company, Inc. > > 803.936.8595 Direct Line > > 800.922.1147 Toll-Free (x8595) > > 803.739.1176 Fax > > > > -- > Letting your vendors set your risk analysis these days? > http://www.threatcode.com > > If you are a SBSer and you don't subscribe to the SBS Blog... > man ... I will hunt you down... > http://blogs.technet.com/sbs > > List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx > List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx > List archive: > http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir@mail.activedir.org/ > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.430 / Virus Database: 268.15.6/567 - Release > Date: 12/4/2006 7:18 AM > > -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.430 / Virus Database: 268.15.6/567 - Release Date: 12/4/2006 7:18 AM List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir@mail.activedir.org/
-- S.
