TWO KMS 2016-2019

Question

I am about to install a new KMS on a Windows 2019 with a Host Key 2019, I currently already have a Windows Server 2016 KMS 2016 where I have activated my infrastructure.

My question: Are the teams with 2016 activated always going to renew in my 2016 KMS or are they now going to look for it in the KMS2019? I will leave both KMS published.

Answer 1

Hello Mario,

The machines already activated with the 2016 KMS will attempt to activate with that machine. A KMS client will try to go back to the KMS host it last activated with first5.

If that fails it will query DNS for another KMS host to Query..

Reasons why the existing KMS clients may fail to reach the KMS2016 host include but are not limited to:

Network issues including DNS issues.

Lack of count of the KMS 2016 Host.

KMS Host is unavailable, rebooting for updates for example or down for Maintenace .

The bigger question is how many KMS clients do you about? Roughly.

100 or more there shouldn't be any concerns.

You can use SLMGR to specify the KMS host to query thus overriding the DNS query for any KMS host.

From an elevated cmd prompt:

you can run: ( replace "Computername" with teh name of the KMS host you want the KMS client machine to activate with.

slmgr /skms "computername"

See slmgr /? for all the commands.

The above command to specify the KMS host name can be reverted if you need to go back to having the clients query the DNS host for KMS hosts

Answer 2

Hello,

Thank you for posting in Q&A forum.

Will teams that have activated 2016 continue to renew in the 2016 KMS?

If these teams' computers have already activated Windows Server 2016 with the 2016 KMS, they will continue to renew with that KMS server. This means that their computers will periodically contact the 2016 KMS server to update their activation status.

Will they now look for activation in KMS2019?

If these teams' computers are upgraded to Windows Server 2019 and you want to use KMS2019 to activate the new operating system, they will need to contact the KMS2019 server to obtain new activation licenses. In this case, they will obtain the new activation status from KMS2019.

You want to keep the published status of both KMS.

It is a common practice to keep the published status of both KMS servers, especially during transitions or when you need to support multiple operating system versions. This ensures that your different teams or computers can select the appropriate KMS server for activation based on their operating system version. You need to ensure that both KMS servers are accessible to the computers in your infrastructure and update the KMS client settings of these computers as needed.

I hope the information above is helpful.

Best Regards,

Yanhong Liu

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