Which licensing scenario can cause Windows activation to fail when creating a new base image with MCS?

• A. MAK licensing
• B. KMS licensing
• C. Retail licensing
• D. OEM licensing

Answer: (A)

When creating a new base image with MCS, activation is checked for each VM that is provisioned from that image. A MAK (Multiple Activation Key) is intended to activate a finite number of machines. If you embed a MAK in the base image and then deploy many desktops from it, every new VM will attempt activation against that MAK, quickly consuming its activation quota. Once the quota is exhausted, subsequent activations fail, causing Windows activation to fail for new desktops.

In contrast, a KMS setup is designed for large numbers of activations via a KMS host, which scales with pooled deployments. Retail or OEM licenses are not suited to this imaging/scaling scenario, especially in VDI, where MAK-based activations would run out.