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Todd's Tips for System Adminstrators

Setting up a KMS Server

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Windows 7 Volume licensing basically has three ways to activate, MAK, MAK proxy and KMS. The first two require a key and the proxy needs to use the Volume Activation Management Tool. I won’t get into MAK today, its is somewhat straight forward. If you need information, check out the information on MAK at TechNet, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd979805.aspx.

What I want to talk about is KMS, Key Management Service. Setting one of these servers up is as easy as making Kraft Dinner. Yes, simple. In reading in the forums I see people having troubles getting one up and going. I’ll walk you through the easiest setup. This walkthrough isn’t meant for someone already using a KMS server for Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008.

If you want to activate Windows 7 clients, the simplest choice is install Windows Server 2008 R2. You can use Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008 but you need to install an update. If you have Server 2008 R2, I recommend using it, its just the easiest thing to do. There is a hierarchy of how the setup works, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd979804.aspx will give you the low down.

For me, Windows Server 2008 R2 based KMS server made the most sense. The next step is to locate your KMS key for your volume activation. The key you are looking for, is the Windows Server 2008 Std/Ent KMS B (note the KMS B). System Information

Instead of using the MAK key when you enter the key for activation, you will enter in your KMS.

Windows Activation

You will get an warning message that you are using a KMS key, like this.

Windows Activation

Click OK and you will have then made a KMS host machine. That is all there is to it. Some people get worried and think they have to add a Windows 7 key for the KMS host to accept Windows 7 clients. You don’t need to do that, at least I didn’t have to.

The other thing to remember is that in order for your server to activate computers, you must have at least 5 Servers checked in for server activation to occur or 25 Windows 7 or Vista machines checked in for client activation to occur. To check the status of the computers, I find the VAMT tool which comes with the WAIK works well.

Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Exchange 2010

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All three of these products have launched over the past few days.

I had the opportunity on Wednesday to head up to Toronto for the launch. Steve Balmer was on hand to do a keynote speech and had a few interesting points.

He was asked when Microsoft was going to force customers to upgrade to Windows 7. He countered that they have customers who are still running Windows NT.

Another question was around the 32 bit edition of Windows. When was Microsoft going to stop making a 32 bit edition of Windows. Steve’s reply was that they would let Intel dictate that as right now the Atom processor is popular and doesn’t support 64bit operating systems. As long as Intel was making a 32 bit processor, Microsoft would make a 32 bit edition of Windows.

I also had a chance to hop on a touch screen PC and see how they worked. We use some touch screens for our Kiosk computer and I wanted to see what type of improvements I could expect.

Also launching was Windows Server 2008 R2. There are a few new improvements in R2, most notably, the ability to use Direct Access, Branch Cache and improvements to Windows Deployment Services (WDS). I’ll take some time and cover these topics in more depth in the next while.

 

The last product that launched was Exchange 2010. Storage is something that is supposed to be improved in this version. I haven’t looked at the beta bits or RTM bits yet, but I will sometime later this fall, after my sessions at TechDays Ottawa.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 (MDT 2010)

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The MDT 2010 Beta is now available on the Microsoft Connect site as I saw on the Deployment Toolkit Team Blog . This is the next version of the Microsoft Deployment toolkit, which is an accelerator for both OS and application deployments.

What’s New?

  • Support for deploying Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 in addition to deploying Windows Vista SP1, Windows Server 2008, Windows XP SP3, and Windows 2003 SP2
  • Hard Link Migrations using USMT 4 for Refresh scenarios which will dramatically reduce your user state backup and restore time
  • Integration of the new Windows AIK 2.0 Beta toolset such as DISM and BCDBOOT, and Windows PE 3.0

Also note, this version is for LAB deployments of Windows 7 using Lite Touch. Michael Niehaus recommends you not deploy this into your live environment which, for most people, is smart idea. No one has ever accused me of being smart or being like most people, but since I don’t want to break my existing MDT setup, I’ll install this to a Hyper-V server and make a test environment for myself. If I get a chance to give it a thorough test and it doesn’t break what I have working already, it might just end up in my live environment before Groundhog’s Day.