Windows 10: Use Enterprise proper instead of Enterprise Evaluation
msarehn opened this issue · comments
We're using your Windows 10 images to automate the setup of a Windows Build VM for our CI (and it's been a real life-saver, thank you, a thousand times!)
Unfortunately, we cannot activate the Windows 10 VM, because it's the Enterprise Evaluation edition. Effectively, it's missing the SKUs in C:\Windows\System32\spp\tokens\skus. Copying the missing SKU information from a different Windows 10 version works, but that's quite a hack and I'm pretty sure that MS doesn't approve.
Could you add Windows 10 Enterprise (proper) instead of or in addition to the Evaluation version? Needs only the Enterprise install, even, because edition up- and downgrades can be done simply be using a differnt product key.
@msarehn thanks for reaching out. I'm glad to hear you find the boxes useful.
Indeed, I use the evaluation version for all Windows-based builds, and the reason is that they are publicly available. Even though I have access to the Enterprise proper ISOs myself, it could be an easy violation of the license terms as well to make a Vagrant box of images built from that publicly available - even without activation.
I provide these boxes as samples to get started with certain platforms. For CI scenarios - as being part of pipelines for production systems - I'd suggest building and hosting your own boxes customized for your needs. For the Enterprise proper it would be as simple as replacing the ISOs and checksums in the packer build definitions in this repo. You can then host the private boxes on any file storage you like or in the Vagrant registry too, but private boxes there cost money too.
I'm spending already around 100$ a month for building and maintaining these boxes, and I'm afraid I cannot afford more permutions / options at the moment, I hope you can understand that. But I'm glad to help with advice on building your own boxes with the proper versions.
@msarehn closing this now, but please let me know if there's anything else I can help with.
@gusztavvargadr sorry, totally forgot to reply. Thanks for your help! Indeed, we're now building our own boxes, so everything's fine :-)