Holy Microsoft Office Activation VDI-Man!! - With a Little Help From Homer Simpson

Hi Friends,

I've got a GOOD one for you today!  This one caused some major freaking out...

I'm increasing the number of desktops in my environment so I can give my Nimble Storage a good workout.  But don't forget, more desktops equal more servers too.  I added four Cisco UCS servers and all seemed good.  I kicked of Login VSI and on SOME of the desktops I see this error message...

What the heck?!  I activated you already!!!!!

To make things worse, it was only happening on SOME of the desktops...  Intermittent problems sucks.

I logged into the golden image as both a VDI user and Administrator, and Microsoft Office didn't want to be activated...

I logged into a Linked Clone desktop as a VDI user and Administrator and Microsoft Office didn't want to be activated...

What is the problem??  PLEASE someone tell me, what is the answer?!

In the evening I was doing some research on why Windows suddenly wants to be reactivated.  In a lot of the forums I read it's usually due to a motherboard change.  Hmmm, motherboard change eh?

So in the morning I was determined to figure this out.  I ran an new workload in Login VSI and noted four desktops, two that were okay and two that wanted to be activated.  I logged into both manually and yep, same behavior as the automated behavior.  What is different between these four images?

Think Think!!

The desktops that were NOT working were on my new UCS servers.  Why why why?

Different Motherboards - Office Needs Activating, Different Motherboards - Office Needs Activating, Different Motherboards - Office Needs Activating, Different Motherboards - Office Needs Activating...

AH HA!!!  They're a different model!  My regular servers are UCS B230 blades and these were UCS B200 and C220's!  And Microsoft Office is detecting it as a hardware change!!!

Now VMware has something called EVC or Enhanced vMotion Compatibility.  You can make your different Intel or AMD chips think they're a certain version of the chips.  I haven't tried this yet, but when I do I'll let everyone know what happens!

In the mean time I migrated off those servers and I'm using them for Infrastructure so I don't have to worry about Microsoft Office activation.

Until Next Time!
-Brain