Volume Activation for Windows HPC Server 2008.

Recently, many of my colleagues and partners have been having problems activating their copies of Windows HPC Server. However, this may due to the lack of understanding of the new Volume Activation (VA) procedures for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista.

With Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista, Microsoft has introduced VA 2.0. Also, on top of that, quiet a few of our customers are using Volume Licensing (VL) and VL needs a local activation server to work.

So my best advice?
Refer to https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/vol/default.mspx for an overview of Volume Licensing.

As they say, the devil is in the details.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb892849.aspx