Activate Office 2010 by KMS

To activate your Office 2010, Visio 2010 or Project 2010 you can use both MAK or KMS volume activation methods. For midsize and large enterprise environments (250> seats) KMS activation is the best suitable solution. If you currently using KMS for activating your operating systems (Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2) you are ready to activate Office 2010 as well by using the current Volume Activation solution.

Review activation methods

Office 2010 activation technologies provides two activation methods:

• Key Management Service (KMS)   A server-client model in which a computer serves as the KMS host, which requires a KMS host key to be installed and activated. This establishes a local activation service in your environment. Office 2010 client computers connect to the local Office 2010 KMS host for activation.
• Multiple Activation Key (MAK)   With a MAK key, Office 2010 client computers activate online by using the Microsoft hosted activation servers or by telephone.

The kind of key installed determines the activation method. All Office 2010 volume license editions have the KMS client key pre-installed. You do not have to enter a product key if you are deploying KMS clients. If you want to use MAK activation, you have to enter the correct MAK key.

 

Overview of Microsoft Office 2010 Volume Activation can be downloaded here.

A combination of KMS and MAK can also be used. For example, Office 2010 running on desktops has the KMS client key installed, whereas Office 2010 running on portable computers has the MAK key installed.

The model chosen depends on the size, network infrastructure, connectivity, and security requirements. You can choose to use only one or a combination of these activation models. Typically, the same activation method for a particular instance of Windows would be used for Office. For more information about how to decide which activation method to use, see the Windows Volume Activation Planning Guide (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=183040).

Key Management Service (KMS)

KMS is a server-client model in which a computer serves as the KMS host. KMS activation requires TCP/IP connectivity. By default, KMS hosts use DNS to publish the KMS service, and client computers connect to the KMS host for activation by using anonymous remote procedure calls (RPCs) through TCP port 1688. You can use the default settings, which require little or no administrative action, or manually configure KMS hosts and clients based on network configuration and security requirements.

KMS activation steps

• Although you have six KMS host activations on the KMS host key, we recommend that you activate no more than one or two KMS hosts. To activate the KMS host on the Internet, run KeyManagementServiceHost.exe in the Microsoft Office 2010 KMS Host License Pack (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=169244). This is a free download from Microsoft. To activate the KMS host on the telephone or manually, and to configure the KMS host, use the slmgr.vbs script. For more information, see Deploy volume activation of Office 2010.
• When the KMS host is activated, existing KMS clients activate automatically. Certain instances require KMS clients to be configured by using the ospp.vbs script. For more information details, see Tools to configure client computers in Office 2010.

The KMS host key for Office 2010 is not specific to a particular operating system. It is designed to be used on any of the operating systems supported as an Office 2010 KMS host, including both 32-bit and 64-bit editions:

• Windows Server 2003 or with any service packs
• Volume License editions of Windows 7
• Windows Server 2008 R2

Resources:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee624358.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff603508.aspx#section4

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office/ee691939.aspx

Back-up SharePoint with DPM2010

Woundering how to back-up SharePoint with DPM 2010 properly ? Below steps enables you easily to back-up your SharePoint environment.

To start and register the WSS Writer service:

1. Open a command prompt window using elevated privileges. From within the Command Windows, navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\DPM\bin and launch ‘ConfigureSharepoint.exe’
2. In the command window that appears, you will see the request “Enter the user name for “WSSCmdletsWrapper:” Enter the account name for the user account you granted Farm Administrator credentials
   If you enter an invalid account, you will receive the following:
   ◦Invalid user name.
   ◦Examples of valid user name are “username@domain” and “domain\username”.
   ◦Once you add a Fully Qualified account name and hit enter, you are presented with the next line requesting a password.
3. Enter the password for ‘WSSCmdletsWrapper’:
   After a moment of configuring, the entry “The command completed successfully” will appear and the CMD window will close.

DPM only offers the option of protecting the entire SharePoint farm as seen in the screenshot below. This changes when the discussion revolves around recovery of data, as we will see in the next section. DPM provide a great deal of granularity when it comes to recovery of SharePoint data.

If the WSSCmdletsWrapper is not registered properly, then the SharePoint farm you see in the screen shot above will not appear. If it is missing, run the ConfigureSharePoint.exe utility on a SharePoint front-end web server to allow DPM to reconfigure the necessary options.

At this stage, you should be able to create a DPM Protection Group which contains the SharePoint servers take an initial replication of the content. Depending on the size of the sites, this can take a few minutes to hours to complete.

All relevant SharePoint databases are selected by automatically. There is no need to select those one-by-one or by Database Protection group(s).

Since there are numerous distributed SharePoint implementations across many servers, we need to talk about which of these servers to protect. Here is a short list.

• Web Front-end servers – Since all are the same, only one will need to have the ConfigureSharePoint.exe on it to register the WSS Writer.
• Configuration Database Server – The data stored here is unique and not stored on other database servers so it is vital that you have a DPM Agent installed to protect it.
• Content Database Servers – Content databases host all the information, content, and data of the farm. Each needs to be protected by a DPM Agent.

Creation of a DPMRecoveryWebApplication isn’t required any more with SharePoint 2010.

Thanks to Jeff Hugh

Choosing an Appropriate User State Virtualization Solution

Ik kwam zojuist een interessant artikel tegen omtrent User State Virtualization (Roaming User Profiles, Folder Redirection en Offline Files & Folders). Op basis van een aantal users scenario’s kun je bepalen welke vorm of combinatie ingezet kan worden. Voor alle scenario’s geldt dat de gebruikers behoefte hierbij centraal staat.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=fd01ed7a-c603-4f7c-8a60-8e4872b58bdf#filelist