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Important

Versions of the Microsoft Rights Management Service SDK released prior to March 2020 are deprecated; applications using earlier versions must be updated to use the March 2020 release. For full details, see the deprecation notice.

No further enhancements are planned for the Microsoft Rights Management Service SDK. We strongly recommend adoption of the Microsoft Information Protection SDK for classification, labeling, and protection services.

This topic describes the purpose and functions of the RMS Server; for Azure and Windows Server.

Azure RMS - For information on using the Azure Rights Management service, see Enable your service application to work with cloud based RMS.

Important

We recommend developing and testing your application via Azure RMS.

Windows Server - For RMS on premise servers, beginning with Windows Server 2008, you can install and configure the RMS service by adding it as a role. To install the service on prior operating systems, download it from the Microsoft download center at Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services with Service Pack 2.

Of the many web services installed, the following are important for application development for RMS Server on Windows Server.

Service Description
Administration Hosts the Administration website that enables you to manage RMS. The service runs on root certification servers and on licensing servers. You can use the Active Directory Rights Management Services Scripting API to write administration scripts.
Account Certification Creates machine certificates that identify computers in the RMS certificate hierarchy and rights account certificates that associate users with specific computers. For more information, see Activating a Computer and Activating a User.

This service runs on the root certification server.
Licensing Issues an end-user license. The service runs on root certification servers and on licensing servers.
Publishing Creates an issuance license which define the policies that can be enumerated in an end-user license. For more information, see Creating an Issuance License.

The service runs on root certification servers and on licensing servers.
Pre-certification Enables a server to request a rights account certificate on behalf of a user. The service runs on root certification servers and on licensing servers.
Service Locator Provides the URL of the account certification, licensing, and publishing services to Active Directory so that they can be discovered by RMS clients. The service runs on root certification servers and on licensing servers.