Microsoft Volume Licence Keys (VLK) are needed to install any Microsoft product.
If you buy box copies (FPP) or OEM, you’ll get the licence key on the machine/disc.
If you purchase through Volume Licensing (Open, Open Value, Select, Schools etc) you go to the VLSC website, go to the product keys section and away you go. While this is true for the vast majority of products, there are a few exceptions to this rule. These products won’t have a VLK listed in the VLSC site. One that usually surprises people is SQL…this doesn’t have a licence key available online.
Rather than trying to list any & all products that this applies to, I’m going to give you the link to the:
Product Activation & Key Information
page on the Microsoft site.
Here you can search for the product in question and if it doesn’t return a result, it doesn’t need a licence key.
Hope this helps 🙂
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 