Upgrade your Windows Server edition without a re-install

Back in the ‘old days’ there were , just as right now, different version of Windows Server.
Whenever you installed the Enterprise Edition and realized you should have chosen DataCenter edition, you would need to do a re-install of the operating system.
Very, very annoying…

Then Windows Server 2008 R2 was introduced Open-mouthed smile

One of its may improvements was the ability to ‘upgrade’ your Windows edition within having to re-install the entire operating system.
Instead, you could do this with a simple commandline where you use the tool called DISM which is part of the operating system since Windows Server 2008 R2.

The supported upgrade paths for Windows Server 2008 R2 are:

  • Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard -> Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise -> Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Server Core -> Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Server Core -> Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter Server Core
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation -> Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard

So, howto do the actual upgrade? Easy 😀

Note that in this post I’ve used the KMS Client Setup Key. These keys can be found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff793421.aspx

One comment

  1. saif says:

    nice article. I am windows server 2008 SP2, and i want to convert its edition from Standard to Datacenter using KMS, i have already done it for windows 2008 r2 as described above, how can i convert from window 2008 sp2 to data center, please advise.
    saif

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *