Pre-pidded Exchange 2010 reported to run in evaluation mode

November 10th, 2009 | Tags:

Yesterday (during Stephen Elop’s TechED keynote) I upgraded my release candidate of Exchange 2010 to RTM, thankfully this went without a hitch. However, like the rest of the community it appears that the “pre-pidded” copy of Exchange released to TechNet and MSDN installs as an evaluation copy.

My initial thoughts were that this was an “upgrade” glitch, then I found posts on the TechNet Forums and EHLO referring to the same issue during a clean installation. Recent feedback from an Exchange team member clarifies (update: hrmm, not entirely) the situation:

Taken from EHLO:

Exchange said:

Everyone asking about the “pre-pidded” TechNet version, few things:- Exchange 2010 licensing warning is a licensing warning only, like it used to be with Exchange 2007. The server – when installed – does not have a product PID. A PID needs to be entered post setup, and the PID will determine the version of the server. Once the evaluation period is over, the product will still work the same, with same limitations of the non-licensed server. It is not a “time bomb” but rather a licensing warning. The details around keys mentioned here still apply: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb232170.aspx

– Please post a comment on this: I am guessing that somewhere, we mention that the TechNet version is Pre-pidded or else not so many of you would be asking about this. Can you tell us exactly where we say this, so we can correct this? We do not have a pre-pidded version.

Update 2:
Taken from EHLO:
NOTE TO ALL: it might take us a day or two to sort this out, but your servers will keep working. Even if the counter reaches zero (0) – there is no loss of functionality or service disruption that you will experience.
Update 3:
Taken from EHLO:
OK, this should now be fixed. Please log back into MSDN / TechNet and you should now see the keys at the Exchange 2010 download. You can use the key with the download that you already have.

Source: here

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