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Upgrade Fresh Factory Installed Windows Server 2016 to Windows Server 2019

Copper Contributor

Purchased a dell poweredge server last year but due to some reason beyond our control we could not set it up. We however unboxed it a few days ago and powered it up. The system came with factory installed windows server 2016 as we specified Dell to do with its license of a Windows Server® 2016,Standard Ed, 16CORE License plus additional 12 CORE License because it has dual CPU of 14 Core each. As I write the system is clean install and we have not installed any server role service on it. We however want to upgrade it to Windows Server 2019 before we install Active Directory and the rest. Please help us by showing us the way we can go about that and whether we can do it like how we upgrade our windows 8.1 computers to windows 10 using the windows media creation tool, where needed not to put in any new key but they inherited that of the pre-existing key of windows 8.1 pro.
Can we install or upgrade to Windows Server 2019 Standard Edition using the keys of the Windows Server® 2016,Standard Edition.

1 Reply

First thing I'd check the dell site and or here to see that the hardware supports Server 2019.

 

https://www.windowsservercatalog.com/

 

Your Server 2016 product key can only be used to activate Windows Server 2016. There is no free upgrade process for windows server unless you happened to have purchased software assurance. What you'll need to do is purchase a new Windows Server 2019 license (plus core packs to cover cores), then install the OS and activate using the new product key.

 

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