There are a few situations you might want to do this, security and least privileged accounts comes to mind, as does auditability. However, you will also need to do this when your SQL server is using Windows Authentication. Otherwise you’ll run into: “There was an error connecting to VMware Update Manager… Database temporarily unavailable or has network problems” when trying to enable the plugin:
Configure the VUM Service to use a Service Account
The fix is easy however. On the VUM server:
- Start > Run > Services.msc
- Select the VUM Service, right click, properties:
- Select the Log On tab, then “This Account”
- Give it a user & password for a user you don’t mind having “Log on as a service” permissions.
- Ok, and restart the service
Reference: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1015223
I prefer to do the entire install of VCUM including the creation of the ODBC connection using the service account that will be used for the Update Manager service. I use a password generator to build a 12 digit very complex password and assign this as the password for the service account. This prevents people from trying to use the service account as a generic admin login account and it could also be locked down further by only allowing login on the VCUM server. This method works well with both SQL and AD based authentication.
Least privilege service accounts FTW!