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Anyone know if there is a way to switch windows from one version (not release) to another, while also changing the licenses?

We have a couple of virtual machines in an isolated domain which have been installed on a box using 2008 datacenter. These need to be separated and moved to another installation, which will require using other licences.

These currently have SPLA licences and the 'new' installation will have different SPLA licences. Everything will have to be reactivated.

I'd like to avoid having to reinstall everything as we have a lot of work invested in the installation and I'm looking at several days to a week to install, configure and migrate the current install. Obviously I'd like to avoid this since everything will be identical.

The DC is Win2008-R1 - would an upgrade from 2008 Datacenter to 2008 R2 standard be likely to work?

I'm thinking of a reinstall with repair, but I don't have the hardware available at the moment to try this out and see if it will work.

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  • via dism you can upgrade a version but there is no supported way to downgrade!
    – tony roth
    Apr 6, 2011 at 19:07

3 Answers 3

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I know you can do an 'Anytime' upgrade, but I dont think you can downgrade without reinstalling everything from scratch.

Moving from Datacenter to Standard is a downgrade, not upgrade

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I doubt if there's a supported way of migration between licenses. However, if I understand your question correctly, the server is used as Hyper-V so, installing a new Hyper-V and moving the machines to it, wouldn't be a problem. I would suggest consulting Microsoft for it.

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  • These are running on hyper-v yes and the plan is to migrate them to another hyper-v server. However the license is tied to the other instalation where they were using datacenter. The new setup only requires these two vms so standard is more than sufficient.
    – Ian Murphy
    Apr 6, 2011 at 21:22
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Problem solved. Essentially there isn't a problem.

We spoke with a licence specialist and it turns out that which license you use and which you pay for don't have to be the same. The technical implementation doesn't particularly matter... well sort of.

We can use two vms installed with datacenter licenses so long as the monthly SPLA payments per user are what they would have to be to cover what is being used.

The install uses two vms - paying a charge for two win2008 standards makes it legal.

Curious, but it makes sense really.

Ian

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