I had to install Exchange 2010 on a 120day trial for a client recently. The planned weekend for the down time had arrived but the new partner licenses had not. No bother I thought, it will be easy to enter the Exchange 2010 license when it arrives as the new ‘change your license key anytime’ feature in Server 2008 is great.
Not so in Exchange 2010. What you get when running on a trial key is a pop-up box every time you open the Exchange Management Console.
It informs you to enter your new license in the “Exchange server work centre action pane” but where on earth is that?
From the Exchange 2010 Management Console.
- Expand Microsoft Exchange
- Select ‘Server Configuration’
- Select the unlicensed Exchange 2010 server and right click.
- Finally select ‘Enter Product Key…’ to start the license wizard.
Once you’re all done you should get the success message. Simply restart the Information Store service or restart the machine with any necessary Windows Updates.
Note:
The preferred way of doing anything now in the majority of Microsoft’s server products is with PowerShell 2.0. Exchange 2010 is no exception. The confirmation screen of the wizard nicely displays the PowerShell command executed; here it is repeated with a dummy product key for completeness.
Set-ExchangeServer -Identity yourserver -ProductKey ABC12-DEF34-GHI56-JKL78-MNO90
Do you know if restarting the information store for a mailbox server hosting the active copies of the databases in a DAG will be considered a failover event?
Hi John,
I’ve had no real issues with the Exchange 2010 installation I’ve been managing so I can’t say for certain, sorry.
Good luck finding out.
Niall
I get error
Error:
You Must Provide a Value for this Propert:
Exchange Managament shell command Provide:
Set-Exchangeserver -Identity “Mail1-2010” ProductKey xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxxx
Elapsed Time 00:00:01
I have replace My key and Places all x’s
can you help.
Hi, I have doubt.
My company has a licensed Exch 2010 Std edition installed on a rack server and that also contains the DC. Recent past I built up another server (basically a secondary DC + Exch 2010). I was able to connect the servers, replicate the AD objects and Exch Users mailbox, all came fine. (Note: the secondary server has the trial version of Exch 2010 std.) I removed the secondary server as I was needing it for some other purpose. What happened now is, whenever I open the EMC (the primary one) , I get to see a dialogue box asking me to enter the product key and this is pointing to secondary server which is no longer connected. How will I get rid of the issue? The primary Exch has no problem and its working fine, but when i click on the Server Config, I see 2 Exch server (1 is the licensed and working; 2 – trial version came from the secondary server). The trial version which will expire in 120 days, will it cause any problem to the primary server after 120 days?
Hi Anand,
That sounds like a better question for the Exchange forums on Technet (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/category/exchangeserver/) or the always excellent ServerFault Q&A site
(http://serverfault.com)
I’ve had no issue with Exchange 2010 licensing, I posted about the late inputting of the product key as it was a genuine new situation I had to search for. It sounds like as you’ve physically removed the 2nd Exchange Server you’ll also need to remove it from the Active Directory configuration. I do not know how to do this of the top of my head so as always Google is your friend in this situation.
Niall
Thank you a bunch for sharing this with all people you actually understand what you are talking approximately! Bookmarked.
Hi Mukesh,
Only a few years late with to your reply, and I hope you figured it by now. 😉
You’re missing the – before ProductKey
Set-Exchangeserver -Identity “Mail1-2010″ -ProductKey xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxxx
Excellent spot on the missing – Chris, good eyes!