AFAIK a KMS Server needs 25 Clients to be activated by this KMS to really activate those clients. Then the activation is valid for 180 days. If you would run this VM normally, after 180 Days you would loose all the clients. But in the vmware-config you can use some special commands to stop syncing the time and tell the machine to start at e specific timestamp (1248998400 = 07/31/2009 I think): rtc.startTime=1248998400 tools.syncTime = "FALSE" tools.synchronize.continue=FALSE tools.synchronize.restore=FALSE tools.synchronize.resume.disk=FALSE tools.synchronize.shrink=FALSE time.synchronize.tools.startup = "FALSE" time.synchronize.continue = "FALSE" time.synchronize.restore = "FALSE" time.synchronize.resume.disk = "FALSE" time.synchronize.resume.memory = "FALSE" time.synchronize.shrink = "FALSE"
You can chancge the settings of the adapter of the KMS VM image, you just give it an IP adres and ofcourse a subnet mask but you leave the Gateway and DNS settings blank. Than the KMS server is not connected to the internet.
Yea brainwave, that's a good idea: leaving out the gateway and no DHCP. Then you can activate your whole network without a VM on each. An issue with my network is the wireless is a different network address, I'll have to tell you I am able to get the wireless to see a KMS host on a different subnet. Hmm now that I think about it, that last idea probably wouldn't work. I wonder if I give an ethernet KMS host a different wireless router's IP address as the gateway, lol. I wonder if it would be able to get routed to the external internet or ping google. lol, networking 101 for me today : ) and p.s. yes i realize all this talk is useless if you have wireless BRIDGES all over the network instead of tons of NAT routers on each wireless, that's what I should have done : ) .
Thanks brainwave - I now have a functional KMS server with only access to my local network - no internet access and just activated my laptop with those settings in place. Cheers!
hmm, still some things aren't clear to me: 1) Must I leave the VM on? or could I shut it down when no (more) activations are needed? (and bring it up after 180 days?) 2) as above asked; the RenewalInterval is set (standard) to 10080 minutes. Does this mean that the client will check the KMS server every 7 days? 3) After 180 days need the KMS server contact M$?
Thanx 4 the fast reply! Still have a question about "the time". In the .vmx-file, the only missing line which I don't see is "rtc.startTime=1248998400". Should I add this line in the .vmx as exactly above or does it needs a different value (and how do I calculate it? If you want you can PM me
Question? According to instructions in the ReadMe file How can this work if for example one activates a machine after 180 days, and the KMS VM is on a different Date/Time/Timezone (180 days or more behind) Please explain Thank you
The KMS server does not de-activate after 180 days. Computers activated through KMS do need to renew, though. As a side note, the KMS on WZOR does active Windows 7 clients but not server 2008 R2.
Now I tried this on VMware, when the client is 180 days ahead, it refuses to activate, and of course the KMS server loses count if moved 180 days So unless I'm doing something wrong, this tip is not working. However there is an interesting question that comes to mind, if I activated 5 "Windows server 2008" copies (can be easily achieved with VMs) will the KMS server be able to activate a copy of "Windows 7 Enterprise"? Thanks
Sorry for the wrong information. I tried this date trick with KMS server on Vista activation (worked and date didn't matter). I will test this with Windows 7 and KMS. It seems always the VM remembers the number of activations and it keeps going up (you can see the number of KMS activations on the VM server by using "slmgr -dlv" on the server) unless you restore the VM back to the original state by using the downloaded 7zip file again. So this does create a problem with wanting to have an accurate clock on your regular computer. If you fake it to activate, you'll just be de-activated as soon as you put it back to normal because it will think you forgot to sync with KMS for too long. Hmmm... I guess someone can publish information on how to use VMWare to create 25 fake connections that way using the proper date you can again fake the connection number back from 0 to 25.
just as you said, the date trick used to work with vista (confirmed on other forums too) but I think MS has disabled it in 7, we need to figure out a way to increase the count again. Does anybody know if the KMS server needs to contact MS at some point (other than the initial setup of course)?
hmm does this russian VM KMS server use somebody's actual KMS key? Does it really need to activate to MS when it's first run? If so then MS would know who is activating this KMS host with stolen KMS key? And if it doesn't need to be activated would the clients record the KMS host key (encrypted or otherwise)? I think if we could build our own KMS that would be ideal. Just build a VM of Win7 Enterprise which I believe has the required functionality to host a KMS server. Just not sure about the KMS key or how we up the client count to 25+?