I like to practice what I preach, even if it inconveniences me a little bit.  So as annoying as it was last week when my user account password expired and I had to select a new one.

It was more annoying because my System Center Essentials stopped working at the same time.  It reminded me that I was not practicing all that I preach… and this expiration and failure gave me the chance to fix all of that.

User account passwords should expire… depending on the organization you can select the range, and at SWMI Consulting Group I have it set to every 90 days.  However there is another best practice that is at play here, apparent for my breaking my own rule, which is that services should not run under user accounts.  Here’s how I fixed the problems:

1. I created a new account for System Center Essentials called swmi\SCE.  I put it in the right Security Group and set the Deny NAP setting in Dial-in so that nobody could try to log onto the account remotely.
2. I set an impossibly long password (40+ characters with complete complexity) that I wrote down but would destroy once I had entered it everywhere that it was required.  I then set the Password never expires option in the AD account.
3. In the System Center Essentials Administration Workspace I created a new Run As Account and set the proper credentials.
4. I reset the credentials of the Data Warehouse Action Account with the new account’s credentials.

At this point I was ready to go.  I made sure that all of my monitoring was working properly before moving on.

One more test that I knew was going to fail was with Reporting.  Because all of the reports within System Center Essentials are created by Microsoft SQL Server, and external database engine, the credentials for SQL have to be reset as well.

When trying to create any report this error appears: Cannot initialize report. The report server has encountered a configuration error. Logon failed for the unattended execution account. (rsServerConfigurationError).  For this we have to go into the SQL Server proper.  If your System Center Essentials installation uses an instance on a full SQL Server then the following steps must be performed on that server.  If it uses SQL Server Express then you will perform the steps on the SCE Server.

Launch the Reporting Services Configuration Manager. (Start – Programs – Microsoft SQL Server 2008 – Configuration Tools – Reporting Services Configuration Manager)

Ensure that your SQL Server Name and Report Server Instance are properly configured, then click Connect.

In the Navigation Pane select the Execution Account option.

Once you do this you should be set – your reports will create properly, and you should be on your way!