Adding a Run As account or profile to SCVMM 2012

In my previous blog post here, you learned how to add a Hyper-V host to VMM 2012.  In that post, you had to provide credentials that allowed you to discover that the host exists and that had rights to install the VMM 2012 agent on the server.  You had the option to either provide the credentials manually or make use of what is called a “Run As account.”

So, what is a Run As account?  As you may have guessed, a Run As account allows an administrator to securely store credentials in VMM that can be reused to perform various administrative tasks.  In the aforementioned blog post, I used an existing Run As account to enable VMM to simply use the stored credentials for the domain administrator account so that the VMM agent could be deployed to the target machine.  This way, an administrator can automate jobs and perform other duties without having to have constant access to appropriate credentials.

Administrators can add any number of Run As accounts.  In the screen below, you can see the Run As accounts that I currently have configured in my lab.  Note that I have Run As accounts for two domains; one domain is globomantics, a domain that I use as I create courses for TrainSignal and that I’m using for a series I’m writing on VMM.  The other domain is lowe.local, my overall home lab domain.

To see this page, go to the Settings wunderbar, open Security and choose Run As Accounts.

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To create a new Run As account, click the Create Run As Account button on the ribbon at the top of the page shown above.  This will open a screen somewhat like the one shown below.  It’s not identical.  The screen below is the Properties page for an existing Run As account, but the requested information is the same.  You need to provide a name for the account, a description to help you remember the account’s purpose and the associated Active Directory credentials.  If you want the wizard to verify that the information is valid, select the checkbox next to Validate domain credentials.  After you have created the account, the other two tabs become available.

You may not want to validate the account if you’re, for example, creating a non-Windows Run As account.

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Once the account is created, you’ll eventually assign it for use by various resources in VMM.  In the figure below, you can see which resources are making active use of this Run As account.  This information is particularly helpful when you go to delete old Run As accounts.  You can see exactly what will be affected.

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VMM 2012 adds significant self-service capability.  Some of these features will require that self-service users have access to Run As accounts to accomplish particular tasks.

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And that’s how you add a Run As account!

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