Windows activation, at least for 2008 and below, depend on enough hardware changes to happen. Each HW (of non-pluggable devices) change is a single 'penalty' point - except for NIC (based on MAC address) which is more. 4 or so points - and it requires re-activation. This does not apply to KMS licenses.

So unless you drastically change the hardware, you should be safe.
Y.


On Wed, Dec 21, 2016 at 3:27 PM, Nicolas Ecarnot <nicolas@ecarnot.net> wrote:
Hello,

Most of our virtual machines are Linux, but an increasing number of windows VMs are being integrated into our oVirt DCs.

We bought tons of windows server licences, and successfully activated them.

Due to how Windows Product Activation is working, when a windows VM is migrating from a host to another, this product activation is reset, launching a 30 days countdown to auto-shutdown.

According to this old page :

https://mazimi.wordpress.com/2007/07/11/getting-around-windows-activation-when-virtualizing/

and what I can read in microsoft's 2012 server documentations, I then can re-activate it twice during the next 90 days.

Assuming I *want* to have *no* control upon the location of the VMs amongst their hosts (I want them to fly freely, confident in the lovely auto-balance scheduler), I understand all this is not the way to go.

At present, we have 2003, 2008 and 2012 server editions.
the only things I can read about windows 2012 server is related to the commercial aspects (standard licence = 2 VMs, datacenter licencce = infinite # of VMs), but not about this Windows Product Activation trouble.

How do you deal with this?
Is there a special licence type or something dedicated that would prevent such an uncomfortable situation? (Christmas is near, I favor soft terms.)

Regards.

--
Nicolas ECARNOT
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