Planning a KMS Deployment

The KMS does not require a dedicated server. The KMS can be co-hosted with other services, such as Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) domain controllers and read-only domain controllers (RODCs). KMS hosts can also run on physical computers or VMs running any supported Windows operating system, including Windows Server 2003. Although a KMS host running on Windows Server 2008 R2 can activate any Windows operating system that supports Volume Activation, a KMS host running on Windows 7 can activate only Windows client operating systems. A single KMS host can support unlimited numbers of KMS clients; however, Microsoft recommends deploying a minimum of two KMS hosts for failover. Most organizations can use as few as two KMS hosts for their entire infrastructure.

Note KMS is not included automatically in Windows Server 2003. To host KMS on machines running Windows Server 2003, download and install KMS for Windows Server 2003 SP1 and later from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=82964. KMS is available in several languages. The 64-bit version is available at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=83041.