System Center Operations Manager – Apply Licence using PowerShell

Moving System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) from its evaluation edition to a fully licensed install is done via PowerShell rather than anywhere in the console UI.

The Script

Import-Module OperationsManager

New-SCOMManagementGroupConnection
Set-SCOMLicense -ProductId "YOUR-LICENCE-KEY"

Stop-Service OmSdk,HealthService,CsHost
Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 10000
Start-Service CsHost,HealthService,OmSdk
Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 10000

Get-SCOMManagementGroup | Format-Table SkuForLicense, Version, TimeOfExpiration -AutoSize

Replace "YOUR-LICENCE-KEY" with your actual Product ID key. Run this from an elevated PowerShell ISE session (or a regular elevated PowerShell window) directly on the Operations Manager management server.

What Happens

The script imports the SCOM module, connects to your Management Group, applies the license key, then restarts the core SCOM services (OmSdk, HealthService, CsHost) so the new license takes effect. The final command displays the current license status so you can confirm it applied correctly. If the status still shows Eval after the script completes, reboot the management server and re-run just the final Get-SCOMManagementGroup status check — a full service restart via reboot resolves this in the small number of cases where the mid-script service restart doesn’t fully pick up the change.

System Center 2025 and SCOM Managed Instance (Updated for 2026)

Set-SCOMLicense is still the current, documented cmdlet — it carries through unchanged into System Center 2025 Operations Manager, which reached general availability in November 2024. One thing worth tightening up from the original script: Microsoft’s own documentation specifies restarting the System Center Data Access Service (the SDK service) on each management server after a license change, rather than a fixed three-service list. Restarting OmSdk/HealthService/CsHost as above is a commonly-used, more thorough approach from the SCOM community, but if you want to match the official guidance exactly, the Data Access Service restart is the documented requirement. Separately, if you’ve been evaluating SCOM Managed Instance — the Azure-hosted, PaaS version of SCOM with its own consumption-based licensing model — be aware Microsoft has scheduled it for retirement on 30 September 2026. Anyone on that path is being pointed back to either Azure Monitor or the traditional on-prem product covered here.

Resources

• SCOM