Windows Server 2008 License Types

Recently I’ve been doing research on how Windows Server 2008 license the various product versions and what is the real difference.

The licensing of Windows Server 2008, the latest robust server OS from Microsoft, is quite easier compared with that of the prior versions. Mainly there are three kinds of license keys, like I had written about in prior posts, Retail, MAK and KMS.

Retail, of course, is just the type that is contained in the most common packages we can purchase from software store, which actually is not that common to server users. They rarely purchase retail products, simply for its being super expensive in price.

MAK, as I had cleared before, is a kind of license that has an activation instance limitation. Once you reached to the threshold, you will not be able to activate more products.

KMS, the all-mighty license in Volume Activation 2.0 era, is the simplest and best approach to realizing the goal of the most simplified management of IT infrastructure. You get one KMS license, and that’s all you’ll need.

Brilliant, yet powerful!

There are four altogether types of licenses in KMS hierarchy

Vista VL, Vista Volume License that can unlock Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Enterprise.

Detailed illustration on different KMS licenses’ potential power.

Server Group A, mainly unlocks Windows Server 2008 Web and Windows HPC Server 2008.

Server Group B, mainly unlocks Windows Server 2008 Standard and Enterprise.

Server Group C, mainly unlocks Windows Server 2008 Datacenter and Itanium.

An important note on these KMS license is for each group of KMS license, they can also activate their below groups of products. So that means, 

As you must see, Server Group C KMS license is the king of license. They can activate every available products that is prevailing is business and enterprise IT environment, ranging from consumer desktop to servicing server.

Every KMS license can be installed on six machine with each one holds a maximum of 9 times of reactivation allowance.

Using KMS means some extra notice to keep in mind.

KMS license can only be installed on a server to make it the KMS server, responsible for activating all the computers that link to it.

For Vista machines, it needs 25 times different requests of activation from the clients that link to it to initialize the KMS activating service, which means for the 24 machines calls of activation, the KMS server would record it without responding. Beginning from the 25th call, every request of activation will be granted.

For Server 08 machines, the threshold is 5.

Every KMS server must be connected to Internet to activate itself every 180 days, and every clients will ask for activation from KMS server every 180 days. This is to ensure that every machine in the local net is licensed right.

For a KMS server, there is no limit on how many machines it can activate, which making it to be the ultimate license for VA2.0 era.

The only limit on KMS is for MAK and Retail types of license, both can permanently activate a machine, meaning that you can use it as long as you like, but KMS couldn’t.

Every KMS-activated machine must be connected to the KMS server once again in 180 days to validate its activation, and KMS server itself had to connect back to Microsoft to make sure it is running alright, a manned modification, I’m afraid, to limit the all-mighty KMS thus limiting the possibilities of the potential software pirating.