Specifying credentials for Acronis services

The Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Agent for Windows, Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Agent for VMware vSphere ESX(i) (Windows), Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Management Server, and Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Storage Node components run as services. When installing any of these components, you need to specify the account under which the component's service will run.

For each service, you can either create a dedicated user account (recommended in most cases) or specify an existing account of a local or domain user—for example: .\LocalUser or DomainName\DomainUser.

New accounts

If you choose to create dedicated user accounts for the services, the setup program will create the following user accounts:

• For the service of Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Agent for Windows and Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Agent for VMware vSphere ESX(i) (Windows), Acronis Agent User
• For the service of Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Management Server, AMS User
• For the service of Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Storage Node, ASN User

The newly created accounts are given the following privileges:

• All three accounts are assigned the Log on as a service user right.
• The Acronis Agent User user account is assigned the Adjust memory quotas for a process, Replace a process level token and Modify firmware environment values user rights.
• The Acronis Agent User and ASN User user accounts are included in the Backup Operators and Administrators groups.
• The AMS User user account is included in the Acronis Centralized Admins group.

Existing accounts

The setup program will assign the above listed user rights to any existing account you specify for a corresponding service.

If you choose to specify an existing user account for the agent service, make sure that this account is a member of the Backup Operators group before proceeding with the installation. For advanced editions, we recommend that the account be a member of the Administrators group. Otherwise, the Microsoft Software Shadow Copy provider may fail to take snapshots during centralized backups.

If you choose to specify an existing user account for the storage node service, make sure that this account is a member of the Administrators group before proceeding with the installation. Otherwise, the service may lack access to some Windows resources.

If you choose to specify an existing user account for the management server service, this account will be added to the Acronis Centralized Admins group automatically.

When installing an agent on a failover cluster node, such as a Hyper-V cluster node, specify an existing account of a domain user for the agent service. The account must have administrative privileges on each of the cluster nodes. With this account the agent will be able to access the clustered resources on any of the nodes. Alternatively, you can choose to create a new account for the agent. Then, when creating centralized backup plans or recovery tasks, you will need to specify credentials for the domain account with the necessary privileges.

Tips for further usage

• If the machine is part of an Active Directory domain, make sure that the domain's security policies do not prevent the accounts described in this section (whether existing or newly created) from having the above listed user rights.
• After the installation, do not specify a different user account for a component's service. Otherwise, the component may stop working.