By Michael Cherry [bio]
Posted: Nov. 6, 2006

The following is an illustration accompanying an article published by Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm focused exclusively on Microsoft strategy & technology. More samples of our content, as well as a list of upcoming articles and reports are also available.

Administrators can use a Multiple Activation Key (MAK) proxy computer to manage the activation of 25 computers or fewer by following these steps:

(1) The administrator gets a MAK with a specific number of activations from eOpen, Microsoft Volume Licensing Services (MVLS), or MSDN, and installs the Volume Activation Management Tool (VAMT) on a computer running Windows Vista. (In the future, a Windows 2003 or Longhorn Server will also be able to serve as the MAK proxy.)

(2) The administrator can use the VAMT, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), Group Policy (GP), System Management Server (SMS), and scripts to begin activation by collecting the Installation Identifier (IID), which is a hash generated from the Vista Product Key and hardware ID (a numeric identifier generated by polling hardware components).

(3) The MAK proxy computer, which is running the VMAT, uploads the MAK information and the IID for each computer being activated to Microsoft activation servers.

(4) The Microsoft activation servers return a Confirmation ID (CID), a digitally signed value returned by Microsoft to activate the system, to the MAK proxy.

(5) The administrator uses the same tools and scripts from step 2 to install the correct CID to each MAK proxy—activated computer.