Licensing Issue - Deploying TS via VMware template

[NiCkNaMe]

Does anyone have a solution to this?

We have a VMWare infrastruture, upon which we host amongst other things 21 x application terminal servers. I have a base image from which I deploy all of these servers.

There are numerous applications/changes we make on a reasonably regular basis, so I delete all the servers and re-deploy via the template/base image. This uses custom specifications to join them to the domain, change the hostname, create a new SID (in essence a full sysprep) etc, etc.

This all works great.

However I've just come across a problem after deploying them again whereby the machines would not activate against our KMS server. We have the KMS service installed on a 2008 DC with one of our 2k8 KMS keys attached. I think i've found the problem in that KMS activates up to 10 times on six different computers. We must have just exceeded that.

I guess I can call M$ and have them increase this limit - but it is obv. going to be a repetitive issue, unless I am doing something wrong, or there is an alternative way around this?

Thanks
Steve

 

[NiCkNaMe]

I'm not all that familiar with terminal servers, what you're doing seems a bit mad to me and there should be an easier way, but I may also be utterly wrong and this is situation normal.

Could you just script it to give each of the 21 servers a different SID, but every time you redeploy them give them the same 21 SIDs?
The theory being the SIDs are the same so they shouldn't be seen as a different machine every time you do it.

Just my stab in the dark

Possibly is, and i'm open to suggestions!

It's a big improvement on our old physical enviroment - whereby we'd have to re-image the machines every so often when they become bogged down or we need to make a major change, etc.

This way I have a script that deletes all of my terminal servers, a script that runs my scheduled tasks that re-creates the terminal servers, and then a script that creates my NLB clusters. All done in about 20 minutes, and with very little interaction.

It really is only the licensing thing that i've had a problem with. - The SID's referenced in numerous places so I'm not convinced a script to keep them the same is really viable?