I'm facing challenges with a KMS migration from Windows Server 2012 to Windows Server 2019. Specifically, the KMS services on the 2019 servers have not been working for three years, and the activation count remains at zero, which means we still have to rely on our old 2012 servers. The network setup is as follows: we have no internet access, traffic is routed via an F5 Load Balancer that includes both server versions, and DNS publishing is disabled with direct assignment instead of using _VLMCS records. We're using retail activation, not enterprise.
When I bypass the load balancer and direct a client to a 2019 host, I get error code 0xC00F074, indicating that no KMS server could be contacted, despite multiple activation attempts which yield no increment in the activation count. I've ruled out firewall issues and confirmed that ports 1688, 135, and 80/443 are open. There are no KMS logs or event ID 5157 entries on the server. I've also tested a fresh VM installation, but the same issues persist, and packet captures suggest RPC requests are being sent but not properly acknowledged. Has anyone else dealt with similar problems in air-gapped environments, especially with KMS RPC binds? Any insights on registry keys or DCOM settings that might be affecting the activation process would be greatly appreciated!
2 Answers
Have you checked the event logs on both the client and server sides? It sounds like there might be a misconfiguration causing the RPC to fail. Knowing from your description, if there's a problem with the RPC binding or acknowledgment, digging into those logs could shed some light on what's going wrong.
You might want to consider Active Directory-Based Activation (ADBA). It's designed to work seamlessly in most cases. However, I understand that it may not fit into your current environment since you're air-gapped. Still, it's worth looking into it if you haven't already.
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