We purchased a new server from our vendor.
I asked them to install Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard and update everything and setup RAID before delivering it to us.
However when I went to activate Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard it didn’t work.
The vendor installed the evaluation version which made it a little complicated.
I had to do some light Googling to find out how to get it to work.
I wanted to consolidate all of that information in one location so its easier for me to find the next time I need to do this.
Naturally, I already purchased a legitimate education version from our volume licensing partner.
Here it is:
Try an SKUUPGRADE – the eval issue can as such not be activated.
To determine the installed edition, run:
DISM /online /Get-CurrentEdition
To check the possible target editions, run:
DISM /online /Get-TargetEditions
Finally, to initiate an upgrade, run:
DISM /online /Set-Edition:<edition> /AcceptEula /ProductKey:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
For me I used: DISM /online /Set-Edition:ServerStandard /AcceptEula /ProductKey:XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX
I hope this post was useful.
Thanks to Andrew Schulman, TomTom, user282317 from Serverfault.com.