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 the Key Management Service (KMS) to manage the activation of more than 25 computers by following these steps:

(1) The administrator gets a KMS key with a number of activations from eOpen, Microsoft Volume Licensing Services (MVLS), or MSDN, installs it on a computer running Windows Vista, and connects to Microsoft, either online or by telephone, to activate the KMS service. (In the future, a Windows 2003 or Longhorn Server will also be able to run the KMS.)

(2) The administrator registers the location of the computer running the KMS service with the Domain Name Service (DNS). The location of the KMS service can also be included as a Registry key on computers that will use the KMS for activation.

(3) Computers requiring KMS service activation use the DNS record or registry key to connect to the KMS service.

(4) After successfully connecting to the KMS service, computers are activated for 180 days.

(5) Starting shortly after activation (seven days by default, but configurable by administrators), a computer activated by KMS will attempt to reconnect and reactivate. The reconnection and reactivation must successfully complete within 180 days of the last successful activation.

(6) Administrators can use Microsoft Operations Manager or other tools to extract activation reports from the KMS service.