How to licence VMs with Windows server 2022 Datacentre on Esxi

Question

Hi, with the Windows Server 2022 Datacenter license, we have activated a server on which we have an ESXi platform. My question is how and if we can license each individual virtual machine that are using a Windows Server Standard license with the host's Datacenter license?

Answer 1

Hello Josip Sorić,

1. Yes, you can license each individual virtual machine (VM) that is running Windows Server Standard with the host's Windows Server 2022 Datacenter license. And you will need to use the Automatic Virtual Machine Activation (AVMA) feature.
2. About how to active license each individual virtual machine, you can see Automatic Virtual Machine Activation in Windows Server | Microsoft Learn.

Please note that once the AVMA key is installed on the VM, it will automatically activate with the host's Datacenter license when it starts up. You can verify that the VM is licensed with the host's Datacenter license by checking the activation status in the VM's System Properties dialog box.

Hope it helps.

Kind regards,

Lei

Answer 2

Hi! Thank you for the quick response. So, I followed the steps from the given link. So We have Windows Server 2022 Datacenter Host and I want to activate Windows Server 2022 Standard VM. I put in Powershell on VM slmgr /ipk YDFWN-MJ9JR-3DYRK-FXXRW-78VHK and get Activation successful message but in system properties on VM have error that Windows is not activated with error code: 0xC004FD01, also tried reset the VM but still the same, the VM have internet connection.

Answer 3

This error can occur by the following reasons:

1. A support version mismatch between the KMS client and the KMS host machine.
2. A time difference between the KMS client and the KMS host machine.

You can see Error 0xC004F074 when you activate Windows - Windows Server | Microsoft Learn to resolve.

Answer 4

since the documentation explicitly states: "AVMA does not work with other server virtualization technologies." (Automatic Virtual Machine Activation in Windows Server | Microsoft Learn); please answer the question in relation to vmware ESXi

Answer 5

If I understand you correctly AVMA works on Hyper-V but not on vmware ESXi?

Thank you.