Converted Physical to Virtual, Server 2003 Prompts for Activation

[ironclad86]

I just stood up ESXI and converted a physical full back up with RAWS agent installed  to a virtual for the fist time. This is in review of possibly limiting downtime for servers with a disaster. 

After the conversion (surpsisingly very fast) I turned on the Server 2003 Database within its seperate environment outside of production to prevent deduplicated IPs on the network.  It prompted for a Windows Server activation. Either had the option to do it over the internet or phone.  How do you handle these types of problems when converting physical to virtual for only backup purposes if a server were to fail?  I believe all the servers I manage (20 or so) have OEM keys.

Thanks

[pkh · Accepted solution]

If you have an OEM key, then Windows will run only if the OEM bios is present.  When you convert the machine to a VM, you are basically voiding the OEM key.  You either buy a new key or use the machine only during the grace period.  There is no way around this.