Tag Archives: Windows Server

Convert Server 2016 trial version to licensed version

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If you’ve downloaded the trial version of Server 2016 and decided you’d like to just go ahead and put it into to production it’s easy to change the version and save yourself a reinstall of the OS. This article does a good job at explaining the process. The quick version is, at an elevated command prompt enter
dism /online /set-edition:ServerStandard /productkey:WC2BQ-8NRM3-FDDYY-2BFGV-KHKQY /accepteula

That is a KMS key, if you are using a KMS server then you can leave the command as is, if you are using a MAK or retail key just substitute it for the one given. The server will then need to reboot. After you log back in, at an elevated command prompt type: slmgr /ipk WC2BQ-8NRM3-FDDYY-2BFGV-KHKQY and once again use the save key you used in the first command. After that has finished, to activate Windows type the following command:
slmgr /ato

This method worked perfectly for me using a freshly downloaded trial version of 2016 and a MAK key from the volume licensing center.

Hyper-V failed to enable replication for virtual machine

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While trying to switch around my Hyper V replication scheme so I could take one of my servers offline for a while so I could expand its RAID 10 array and change the way I had it the array partitioned to “One Big RAID 10”. I ran into an issue where I wasn’t able to replicate to an old server I had stood up temporarily running Hyper V Server 2012r2, this was just the free hyper v server, not 2012r2 std. The error I got was “Hyper-V failed to enable replication for virtual machine ‘DC2’: The operation timed out (0x00002EE2).”After many failed attempts and lots of scratching on my rapidly balding head I found this post on the microsoft technet forum that fixed the issue for me. I was sceptical that it would work since I had already disabled the firewall, but adding these rules via powershell did the trick. Here is how I implemented the fix.

  1. log in to the offending server(s), either locally or via RDP, you could also run the commands remotely if you choose.
  2. open powershell, if you are running the free hyper-v server this can be done by just typing “powershell” at the command prompt. If you are running standard windows server or the like I’ll assume you know how to launch it from the menu or search.
  3. run the following commands: Enable-Netfirewallrule -displayname “Hyper-V Replica HTTP Listener (TCP-In)”    then this one:  Enable-Netfirewallrule -displayname “Hyper-V Replica HTTP Listener (TCP-In)”

Now try to enable replication for one of your VMs.

Server 2012 Remote Desktop licenses

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I recently ran into a problem where an agency I help purchased some remote desktop licenses from Techsoup. After going through the usual process with the Microsoft Volume Licensing Center no keys were available to do the activation on the server. After much head scratching I found a forum post at Spiceworks that had directions. It’s a bit different that the usual volume license process so I’ll post it below.

f you’ve already set up your licencing server, which you most likely have:

  1. Go into Server Manager
  2. Select Remote Desktop Services
  3. (wait for everything to Load) Click Servers
  4. Right click on the server that you assigned as license manager >Select RD Licensing Manager
  5. Right click on the server listed on the right > Install Licenses
  6. Click Next > Under license program, select Open License > Click Next
  7. Paste / Type in your Authorization number and license number. > Click Next
  8. Select the Product you want to activate and the number of licenses you want to activate.
  9. Finish nexting through that and you’re done.

So to sum things up, instead of getting a license key from the VLSC, you use the Authorization number and license number. Weird.