Windows 7 License mechanism seems to have changed - can no longer clone activated images in Lab Manager?

[great_scandinav]

One used to be able to clone activated images of e.g. Vista but that seem not to be the case with Windows 7, are others discovering this too?

We are a (Microsoft Gold Partner MSDN member) test organization using Lab Manager to go through hundreds of short term used test machines every month, however often using them longer that the default 3 days before activation, so this is a major issue if it is true!

I have observed that deployed templates work fine but as soon as I publish the template and make a Lab Manager (ESX) VM from the template then Windows 7 ask for activation within 3 days. Could it now perhaps additionally check for the (new) MAC address as I have checked the box for CPU virtualization so it can not be the problem.

Does anybody know a work-a-round for this?

[wila]

That's a microsoft licensing question.. You probably just need to wait until you get a Volume License Key for windows 7. As the product isn't released it is not that surprising that this isn't distributed with a VLK license.

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Wil

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[great_scandinav]

I am aware it is mostly a Microsoft question but probably not one they are happy to elaborate on. I do not think this is related to the type of license key but rather that the licensing engine has been modified to for example pick up on MAC address changes or something new.

The problem with this is that it makes the Lab Manager product less attractive to System Test organizations if they have to activate the OS for every copy they make.

[Craig_Baltzer]

The "Ultimate" edition ISO that I installed was a 30 day eval, and it looks like "slmgr -rearm" still works (I'm assuming that you'll still get 3 "rearms" for 120 days worth of eval). With Vista different versions of the ISO/CD (VL vs retail) had different activation times so it may be a case of finding the "right" ISO to use for your Lab Manger install...

I've not been successful in cloning a MAK activated Vista or W2K8; activation always gets tripped but as a Gold Partner I never worried about it as we had 5000+ MAK activations available...