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Friday, September 14, 2018 11:17 AM
Hi, I have KMS hosts for Office 2013/2016 co-hosted on a Windows 2012R2 server. Until now I've installed two Office clients, one Office 2013 and one Office 2016. I installed them before installing the KMS hosts. Once I installed KMSes and activated them I went on the clients and ran "slmgr.vbs /ato <application ID>". They've been successfully activated.
I knew there was a 5 Office clients threshold (5 Office 2013, 5 Office 2016..) needed before the KMS host starts activating the clients, doesn't it? Could someone clarify this aspect to me please?
Thank you.
Francesco B.
All replies (4)
Wednesday, September 19, 2018 7:01 AM ✅Answered
Hi,
The minimum requirement for Office KMS activation is a KMS host and at least five KMS clients in a network environment. Five or more computers that are running Office volume editions must contact the KMS host within 30 days for their activation requests to be successful. When five clients have connected to a KMS host, clients that later connect to the KMS host receive responses that allow the clients to be activated. Due to the re-activation schedule, the original five clients also become activated when they request activation from the KMS host again.
If the number of connected clients does not reach the required number of 5, these clients cannot be automatically activated using the KMS service. At this point, you can use the command on the client to manually activate the client by connecting to the KMS host, just like you did before.
Current Count on the Office KMS Host:
• The client will log the count received by the KMS host. It does not indicate the times of client activation requests received by the Host. If activation fails, it may be because the count is not sufficient for this client OS or that there are not enough systems in the environment to build the count.
• The count displayed will be between 0 and 10. The count is cumulative (between operating systems) and contains the number of valid systems that have attempted to activate within a 30 day period.
• If the count is 0, it is a newly activated service or no valid clients have connected to the KMS host.
Note: The count will not increase above 10, no matter how many valid systems exist in the environment. This is because they count is set to cache only 2 times the maximum license policy returned by a KMS client. For Windows Office KMS clients, the maximum count on the Office KMS host will be 10, as the threshold for Office is 5 (2 x 5, or 10).
If you have any question or update, please feel free to let me know.
Best Regards,
Herb Gu
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Monday, September 17, 2018 10:13 AM
Hi,
As you know, KMS requires that a minimum number of computers connect to KMS before they are allowed to activate. After you set up the Office KMS host, the Office KMS clients send requests for activation and increment the current count of activations. The current count must be 5 or larger before KMS clients are activated. For more information, please refer to this article. For details about KMS, there is an article for your reference: Understanding KMS.
Note: To determine how many client computers are currently in the KMS pool on the KMS host, at a command prompt, type the following command, and then press ENTER: slmgr.vbs -dli
If you have any question or update, please feel free to let me know.
Best Regards,
Herb Gu
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they helped. If you have feedback for TechNet Subscriber Support, contact [email protected].
Click here to learn more. Visit the dedicated forum to share, explore and talk to experts about Microsoft Teams
Monday, September 17, 2018 3:26 PM
Thank you, but this actually does not answer to my question: I have twovolume license Office suites installed and my kms host has activated them. Unless you mean that client requests originating from the same client increment the counter each time they issue the request..
Francesco B.
Wednesday, September 19, 2018 7:28 AM
If the number of connected clients does not reach the required number of 5, these clients cannot be automatically activated using the KMS service. At this point, you can use the command on the client to manually activate the client by connecting to the KMS host, just like you did before.
In bold the the missing clue and the solution. So if I understood well the number 5 is for automatic activation. Issuing "slmgr.vbs /ato ..." will force the activation bypassing the "limit". Am I right?
I have one more question if you kindly want to give me a clue on it.
Current Count on the Office KMS Host:
• The client will log the count received by the KMS host.
What's the Event ID for this specific log on the clients?
Thank you very much.
Francesco B.
