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I have an old windows 2000 OEM server with RAID 1, trying to retire this server but the apps running in the server can't be re-installed. My only option is to convert this to virtual machine to be hosted at windows 2012 server. <br />
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The windows 2000 server license is OEM came with HP Proliant. To convert this to virtual machine, what steps to do get it online without licensing trouble? What I assume is, I may purchase windows 2000 server retail from ebay or somewhere, then reactivate it. Has anyone done it?
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I have an old windows 2000 OEM server with RAID 1, trying to retire this server but the apps running in the server can't be re-installed. My only option is to convert this to virtual machine to be hosted at windows 2012 server. 

The windows 2000 server license is OEM came with HP Proliant. To convert this to virtual machine, what steps to do get it online without licensing trouble? What I assume is, I may purchase windows 2000 server retail from ebay or somewhere, then reactivate it. Has anyone done it?

converting Windows 2000 OEM to Hyper-v guest

Virtualization is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, including (but not limited to) a virtual computer hardware platform, operating system (OS), storage device, or computer network resources. Virtualization is usually the creation of a system that executes separate from the underlying hardware resources, or the creation of an entire desktop for systems located elsewhere, similar to thin clients.

Virtualization

Microsoft Virtual Server was a virtualization solution that facilitated the creation of virtual machines on the Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 operating systems. Virtual machines are created and managed through a web-based interface that relies on Internet Information Services (IIS) or through a Windows client application tool called VMRCplus. Features included Linux guest operating system support, Virtual Disk Precompactor, symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), x64 host operating system support, the ability to mount virtual hard drives on the host machine and additional operating systems support, including Windows Vista, and a volume shadow copy writer.

Microsoft Virtual Server

VMware, a software company founded in 1998,  was one of the first commercially successful companies to offer x86 virtualization. The storage company EMC purchased VMware in 1994. Dell Technologies acquired EMC in 2016. VMware’s parent company is now Dell Technologies.

VMware has many software products that run on desktops, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS, which allows the virtualizing of the x86 architecture.  Its enterprise software hypervisor for servers, VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi), is a bare-metal hypervisor that runs directly on the server hardware and does not require an additional underlying operating system.

VMware

Hyper-V is a native hypervisor; it can create virtual machines on x86-64 systems and supersedes Windows Virtual PC as the hardware virtualization component of the client editions of Windows NT. A server computer running Hyper-V can be configured to expose individual virtual machines to one or more networks. Hyper-V Server supports remote access via Remote Desktop Connection. Administration and configuration of the host OS and the guest virtual machines is generally done over the network.