In one of the environments I was working in, I found that I was consistently receiving an error with Security-Licensing-SLC Event ID 12293 at the same time once a day.

I had always used MAK keys so this error message puzzled me. However, here is an article and forum post from Microsoft’s website explaining the differences between MAK and KMS licensing.

http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/existing-customers/product-activation-faq.aspx
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winservergen/thread/a74c0e24-d97b-41ce-897c-18afa2284b6f/

Instructions to Resolve Issue

In my particular case, I had 2 different MKS hosts in the environment, both running on a Windows Server 2008 platform. I did the following steps to resolve the issue.

1. Log on to one of the DNS servers.
2. Navigate to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > DNS
3. Expand out one of your hosts and navigate to Forward Lookup Zones > > _TCP

   

4. Right click on the window and select Other New Records…

   

5. Select Service Location (SRV) and create the record.
   
    
6. Fill out the fields with the following information (screenshot is provided below):

   Service: _VLMCS (note that this entry might not be in your drop down menu)
   Protocol: _tcp
   Priority: 0
   Weight: 0
   Port Number: 1688
   Hostname: TTL: Select 1 day.

    

7. Click OK and Done to create the record.
   Note that you do not need to recreate this entry on any of your other DNS servers.
8. Log back on to the server you were having issues with and restart the Software Licensing Service.
9. Once the service has been restarted, you should have a Security-Licensing-SLC Event ID 12294. This means your KMS has successfully published.

   

Sources Used: 
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972107, Accessed June 28, 2011
http://defaultreasoning.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/troubleshooting-the-security-licensing-slc-event-id-12293/, Accessed June 28, 2011 
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Windows-Server-License-Manager-Script-slmgrvbs.html, Accessed June 28, 2011