What is required if you have an existing Windows Server 2008 machine (
with applications, settings, etc) and you want to duplicate the machine
as-is (and then change its computer name and IP addressing, but otherwise use it as a second machine)
This is in a Hyper-V environment in case it makes a difference, but this question is more about Windows licensing.
Will the 2nd server just reach out to KMS at some point to update its license, or should this be forced?
Or is copying a Windows machine not even supported by Microsoft?
What I did so far was simply
shut down the machine down and "copy and paste" the entire machine as a new virtual machine, but I'm thinking that this wasn't proper and something else should have been done.
I did some research and keep finding forum posts mentioning this KB:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929829
Based on the article it doesn't sound hopeful that you can simply copy an existing WIndows server. The article mentions a "generalize" sysprep option but we don't want a fresh installation of Windows - we need the 2nd server to already be configured like the original server with all apps and services and configuration (or is this what generalize would do?)
I was hoping there was something that can be done on the 2nd machine now, after the fact. It is up and running but I'm concerned what will happen when it tries to update its Windows license from KMS.
Thank you
Why does Microsoft make you sysprep images then if it's OK to just copy it as-is, I'm thinking there has to be more to this.