If the node renders when you send it a job, it’s activated. The devs probably have a better answer, but I don’t think Corona is technically activated until it tries to render and looks for a license. The batch file you run just tells it where to look for the license when it asks for it. So it won’t be active until you render with it once.
I just keep the .bat file on our network next to the installer file. I don’t have an automatic deployment set up yet, so to install Corona I remote in to the render node, run the installer, then run the batch file.
You just run the batch file once. The activation instructions remain even if you upgrade Corona to a new version.
If you would like to use the .bat activation, you can place the .bat file anywhere.
To check if a computer is licensed, you can go to C:\Users_username_\AppData\Local\CoronaRenderer and see if there is a “token” file in there. There should be also a LicensingLog file in there, which you can open to see if the license was successfully accepted.