ASR replication appliance and Virtual Machine Credentials

Question

Hello, I am working through this article to get Azure Site Recovery working between an on-prem VMware environment and Azure. My question involves this step. Provide virtual machine credentials.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/deploy-vmware-azure-replication-appliance-modernized

This appears to be a service account that requires special rights within the Windows guest VM to deploy software and setup the replication relationship. I can't seem to find anywhere that explains what level of rights this service account requires. I created a domain account with a complex password, but it was left as a standard user. I am just adding it to the local admins group of each guest VM I want to begin replicating.

That worked great until I got to a domain controller that I want to replicate. As we all know, there isn't an isolated admin group for domain controllers, so now I am faced with the prospect of placing this ASR service account into our Domain Admins group.

Are there any other options?

Regards,
Adam Tyler

Answer 1

Hi,

Your assumptions are correct. In order to install software on Windows servers account with Administrative privileges is required. If the server is domain controller such account needs to be in domain Admins group. Information on required credentials is here. It does not explicitly states domain controllers. You might also check additional information around replicating domain controllers.

Please "Accept the answer" if the information helped you. This will help us and others in the community as well.