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Good afternoon all,
I am running ESXi 7.0.2 on my Servers as Hypervisor. I just purchased a license for Datacenter 2022, which should have unlimited VM activations, to upgrade all my servers. The first VM activated fine, but now when I try to activate a second VM, it is giving me an Error 1168, stating the license is already in use. Does it detect ESXi VMs as physical hosts? Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you,
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Another option may be to try phone activation
slui 4
beyond this you may need to get in touch with the seller's trained microsoft licensing specialist.
--please don't forget to upvote and Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--
Just checking if there's any progress or updates?
--please don't forget to upvote and Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--
Thank you for reaching out, unfortunately no developments yet. I reached out to Microsoft, but since I don't have a support plan with them they said they can't help me, and to reach out to the vendor. So I am trying to figure out what's going on with the vendor right now.
Sounds good, please don't forget to close up the thread by 
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Yeah, EXACT same issue. Brand new Windows 2022 Standard 16 Core license. VMware ESXi 8.0U1 host. Windows Activation would not work on either of the two newly installed vm's. We cancelled the product, re-ordered, then it activated on ONE server vm. Tried the slmgr.vbs options, followed with the dism, nada. Zip. Caput.
"slui 4"
Done. Solved. After HOURS of trying support, TDSynnex useless, I repeat, useless. Microsoft Premier support said give us $500 for tech support to help, on a NEW license. Really? F you MS.
Again, "slui 4". Call the number, enter the 9 sets of 7 numbers, then confirmation with 9 sets of 7 numbers. Done.
Thanks TDSynnes, Microsoft, chat, and all the other options we tried that were absolutely useless.
Really appreciate this reminder of this method. It has been a while, but nice to see dinosaurs still live within windows.
Ok, when you use evaluation media you'll need to convert it. Assuming you are using a retail channel product key you can
Dism /online /Set-Edition:ServerDataCenter /ProductKey:xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx /AcceptEula
reboot
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Please read above.
Does it detect ESXi VMs as physical hosts
No, it would not. AVMA can only be used when the host runs Windows Server DataCenter. To activate a DataCenter guest just use the same host product key for activation.
--please don't forget to upvote and Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--
Like I said, I don't have a Windows Host, it is ESXi. I am running 2 Windows VMs right now, one took it and now the second one is giving me the error.
What operating system was installed? What installation media was used?
So, the server came from Dell with vSpehere ESXi 7.0.2 installed on it already. I created the Virtual Machines inside ESXi using the Windows Server 2022 Eval x64 ISO.
Edit:
Then I activated using this:
DISM /Online /Set-Edition:ServerDatacenter /ProductKey:<KEY> /AcceptEula
slmgr /ipk <MY KEY>
slmgr /ato
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.....
Not sure what this means. What channel is the product key? (OEM, retail, volume)
Just checking if there's any progress or updates?
Good morning, I apologize for the late response, my shift had ended. After running the slmgr /dli command, it is stating the my license is from the RETAIL channel.