Host CPU & Windows activation

[davemcl]

If I were to set VM CPU type to host and then migrated an activated Windows 2019 VM between a node using XEON Gold 6152's and XEON Silver 4114's - would this cause a re-activation event ??

If so whats the best CPU type to use - I see posts for both Qemu and KVM64.

TIA
Dave

 

[toomanylogins]

To avoid the host activation do not change everything in one go. We have migrated a number of machines from physical and hyper V to proxmox. To avoid windows reactivation make sure you set the memory, NIC and the number of processes equal to the hyper V settings on first boot. Also use the SATA connector. I always start with sata for boot disk and qemu64 as cpu. Boot machine and install virtio drivers. Switch to scsi and boot it should not ask for reactivation. Change the CPU to host as the last option. But only after booting and using the VM. I always take a snapshot to revert.

 

[TimGrey]

If you're migrating a Windows 2019 VM between nodes with different CPUs, it might indeed trigger a re-activation event. It depends on the Windows licensing and how it's tied to the hardware.As for the CPU type, using "host" should generally work fine, but you might want to experiment with "KVM64" to ensure compatibility across different nodes.In the meantime, I recently came across this site called Digital Chill Mart (digitalchillmart.com). They have some decent deals on Windows 11 keys if you ever need one.

 

[davemcl]

Using Skylake-Server as processor type has worked fine for this.