With Exchange Server 2013, you do not enter a product key
during initial setup. Instead, you provide the product key after
installation using Exchange Admin Center. Until you enter a product
key, Exchange Server 2013 runs in trial mode.
The product key you provide determines which edition is established
on an Exchange server. You can use a valid product key to go from a
trial edition to Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition of Exchange
Server 2013 without having to reinstall the program.
To determine the established edition and licensing for an Exchange server complete the following steps:
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In Exchange Admin Center, select Servers in the feature pane.
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In the main pane, select the server you want to work with.
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Look in the details pane to see the server roles, version, established edition, and license details.
To enter a product key complete the following steps:
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In Exchange Admin Center, select Servers in the feature pane.
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In the main pane, select the server you want to work with.
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In the details pane, select Enter Product Key. This opens the Exchange Server dialog box.
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Enter the product key for the Exchange Server 2013 edition you want
to establish, either Standard or Enterprise, and then tap or click Save.
Note
The product key is a 25-character alphanumeric string, grouped in
sets of five characters separated by hyphens. You can find the product
key on the Exchange Server 2013 media or license.
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You should see a dialog box stating the product key has been
validated and the product ID has been created. If there’s a problem
with the product key, you’ll see an invalid key warning. Tap or click
OK. Re-enter or correct the product key and then tap or click Save
again. Keep the following in mind:
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Whenever you set or change the product key on a Mailbox server, you
must restart the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service to apply
the change.
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While you can upgrade from Standard to Enterprise edition simply by
entering a key for Enterprise edition, you cannot use product keys to
downgrade editions. To downgrade editions, you must uninstall Exchange
Server and then reinstall the older version.
Using Exchange Management Shell, you can enter a server’s product key using the Set-ExchangeServer cmdlet. Setting the Exchange product key syntax and usage shows the syntax and usage. For the identity parameter, use the server’s name, such as MailServer25.
Tip
By
using a valid product key, you can change from the Standard to the
Enterprise edition. You also can relicense an Exchange server by
entering a new product key for the installed edition, which is useful
if you accidentally used the same product key on multiple servers and
want to correct the mistake. The best way to do this is to enter the
product key using the Set-ExchangeServer cmdlet.
