KMS licencing

Question

I have a doubt.

My company is thinking of using volume licensing (KMS activation) for desktops operating systems. The question is: Can computers that have been purchased without an operating system be activated with KMS?
Legally it is feasible, or if there is an audit I may have problems.

Can I license equipment purchased without an operating system using KMS?

source link: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/97a4c272-120e-4c63-88bb-a6b3f5776ee0/kms-licencing?forum=win10itprogeneral

Answer 1

Hi,

KMS is a client-server model, enables product activation.

So I think KMS activation requires operating system.

The KMS client is the Windows operating system that is deployed in the environment and has to activate. KMS clients can be running any edition of Windows that uses volume activation.

More information please refer to the following article:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started/activation-troubleshoot-kms-general

Hope above information can help you.

Answer 2

It is much better to ask a trained Microsoft licensing specialist about licensing issues. Any response in this forum is going to be an opinion of a technical person, not a reply from a person trained to give legal answers that are acceptable to your lawyers and auditors.

But my understanding is that if you have purchased the appropriate volume of desktop licenses to be provided for via KMS, yes, you can use KMS to activate client machines that were purchased without licenses.

Remember that KMS is just a method to activate machines. It is not a method to license machines. You must purchase the appropriate licenses separately.