What is Active Directory managed service account?

What is Active Directory managed service account?

Managed Service Account (MSA) is a special type of Active Directory account that can be used to securely run services, applications, and scheduled tasks. This way, to start a service or unattended jobs, you don’t need to create individual service users in AD and manage their passwords.

What is the difference between service accounts and managed service accounts?

They also have the ability to have their password automatically changed by SharePoint, should you desire that. Managed accounts are ‘service accounts’, but there are ‘service accounts’ that are not managed accounts. Note that a ‘service account’ is just a term used to denote a Domain User account that runs a service.

What is a managed service accounts?

Managed Service Accounts are a Windows feature introduced in Windows Server 2008 R2 for increasing the security of non-user service accounts. Managed Service Accounts, shortened as MSAs, have an automatically-managed, complex password that removes the requirement of manually dealing with password rotation and security.

How do I create a managed service account in Active Directory?

How to Create Service Account in PowerShell

1. Step 1: Create key distribution services (KDS) Root Key.
2. Step 2: Create and configure gMSA.
3. Step 3: Install the MSA on a host computer in the domain, and make the MSA available for use by services on the host computer.

What can gMSA be used for?

Group managed service accounts (gMSAs) are managed domain accounts that you use to help secure services. After you configure your services to use a gMSA principal, password management for that account is handled by the Windows operating system.

What is service account used for?

A service account is a user account that is created explicitly to provide a security context for services running on Windows Server operating systems. The security context determines the service’s ability to access local and network resources.

Which type of account should you use for service accounts?

Traditional service account — A traditional Microsoft service account is just a standard user account. Ideally, it should be an account created and used exclusively to run a particular service, but all too often, business users and admins use their regular user accounts as service accounts in the name of expediency.

Which type of service account has the most privileges?

The Local System account has higher privileges than administrator accounts. Security for service account types can be grouped by the level of security they offer: Most-secure account types.

Does a managed service account have a password?

To be more precise, it’s not that they don’t have passwords, it’s that they don’t require you the administrator to know the password. The password is managed by Active Directory for you. That means not worrying about weak passwords or having to manually rotate them.

How do I use a managed service account?

Using a new MSA always works in four steps:

1. You create the MSA in AD.
2. You associate the MSA with a computer in AD.
3. You install the MSA on the computer that was associated.
4. You configure the service(s) to use the MSA.

How do I install a managed service account?

Steps

1. Enable the Active Directory module for Windows PowerShell on the host where you want to use the gMSA account.
2. Restart your host.
3. Install the gMSA on your host by running the following command from the PowerShell command prompt: Install-AdServiceAccount

How do I find Active Directory service accounts?

The Identity parameter specifies the Active Directory managed service account to get. You can identify a managed service account by its distinguished name, GUID, security identifier (SID), or Security Account Manager (SAM) account name.