Microsoft 2 manual KMS Host Failover, Disabling Windows Anytime Upgrade for Windows Vista

Volume Activation 2.0 Operations Guide

Working with 64-Bit Windows Vista KMS Hosts

The OpsMgr 2005 agent is available only as a 32-bit application. As a result, 64-bit versions of Windows Vista RTM are not automatically added to the KMS computer group defined by the KMS Management Pack. KMS hosts running Windows Vista SP1 or Windows Server 2008 are not affected by this issue. Computers that are not a member of this group do not send data to Operations data warehouse. Since reports are generated from this data warehouse, computers with 64-bit versions of Windows Vista are not automatically included in KMS management pack reports.

To resolve this issue, you can create a custom Computer Group on the OpsMgr 2005 console and add the 64-bit Windows Vista RTM KMS hosts to it.

KMS Host Failover

If a KMS host fails, you must install a KMS key on a new host and activate it. You then need to ensure that the new KMS host has an SRV resource record in the DNS database. If you install the new KMS host with the same computer name and IP address as the failed KMS host, the new KMS host can use the DNS SRV record of the failed host. If the new host has a different computer name, you need to manually remove the DNS SRV record of the failed host. If your network is using DDNS, the new KMS host automatically creates a new SRV record in the DNS server. The new KMS host then starts collecting client renewal requests and begins activating clients as soon as the KMS activation threshold is met.

If your KMS clients are using auto-discovery, they automatically choose another KMS host if their original KMS host does not respond to renewal requests. If you are not using auto-discovery, you need to update the KMS client computers that were assigned to the failed KMS host.

Disabling Windows Anytime Upgrade for Windows Vista

The Windows Anytime Upgrade (WAU) program allows Windows Vista Business users to purchase an upgrade directly from Microsoft by clicking the Windows Anytime Upgrade link in the Extras and Upgrades subfolder of the All

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