Fun with AVMA

Last updated on August 2nd, 2022 at 09:57 am

Recently I ran into a situation where I had to spin up new VMs. The issue: How do you activate multiple VMs without running into licensing issues? The solution: Automatic Virtual Machine Activation (AVMA). Here I describe my fun with AVMA.

Turns out that the host server was running a MAK product key.

To test that AVMA would work, I setup a new Server 2012 R2 VM. During the setup, I entered the AVMA key and the setup continued. So far so good. Once the setup completed and I was able to login, I had to verify that the AVMA key took hold.

Off to the Event Viewer we go!

What was I looking for in the Event Viewer? Well confirmation that the AVMA key worked.

In the Event Viewer, under Windows Logs \ Application, the log with Event ID 12309 is what I needed to find.

On the host server, I looked for Event ID 12310:

Just for good measure, in Server Manager of the guest VM under Local Server, I checked the Product ID:

Success!

So what is needed to get AVMA to work? Here is the recipe:

Hyper-V Host: Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter (With a KMS, MAK, or OEM key)

Guest VMs and AVMA keys:

Integration Services: Data Exchange must be selected in the VM settings.

If you have any questions about how to have “fun with AVMA,” please feel free to leave a note in the comment section below or contact @Enhansoft.