That way as the old OS versions are phased out the KMS infrastructure can be retired as well. I actually support 2 on premises environments where ADBA is being used for the recent OS and Office versions while KMS is still around for the older OS versions. Both Key Management Service (KMS) and Automatic Virtual Machine Activation (AVMA) will work for IAAS and for on premises in these situations. You also need the right versions of both AD and client software and operating systems to use this. Something your most often don’t manage or control if an AD is even present. Now when you’re hosting IAAS services this might not be your best approach as that means it will need to be set up in the AD of your tenants. This is what I use for the Office and Windows editions that support it. If you set this up you’ll enjoy automatic activation of the OS after joining domain configured with ADBA. If you manage on premises environments with one or more AD domains or even forests you might be in a situation where Active Directory Based Activation (ADBA) is the easiest solution. So it’s time to make sure we start thinking about activating Windows Server 2016 in our environments.
