Sorry for the stupid post, but I recently installed server 2012 into a vm machine without a key. Software said it was not activated, ran windows update and just checked it - it is now showing as activated. Does this have anything to do with the 180 day trial?
When not using any "activator" tools, of course it's activated if it says so. You probably have a KMS host on your network, and the VL versions (which don't require a key) will automatically attempt to activate with a local KMS if they can find one (e.g. through DNS).