Change Windows based vCenter 6.5 service account name

How to change windows based vCenter 6.5 service account name 

In vSpeher 6.5 windows based vCenter does not have a separate service in services.msc as it used to be till vSphere 6.0. In vSphere 6.5 it runs as a standalone server rather than a service.  This makes difficult for admins to change the name of the vCenter service account if someone wants to change it post installation.

Below are the steps to change the service account for a windows based vCenter instance. Before you proceed please take a snapshot of the vCenter VM  or backup the system in case of physical machine.

Step 1:  First you need to check with which account the service is running. Please go to task manager or use powershell to get the service account details.

Step 2:  Go to "C:\ProgramData\VMware\vCenterServer\cfg\vmware-vmon\svcCfgfiles" and 

Step 3:  Edit files .state_vpxd, .state_vdcs, .state_perfcharts and .state_vpxd-svcs and change the username to the needed one, next to RunAsUser.

Eg. Before {"StartupType":"AUTOMATIC","RunAsUser":"administrator"}  

       After   {"StartupType":"AUTOMATIC","RunAsUser":"myusername"}

Step 4 Update service user account info using command 
          C:\Program Files\VMware\vCenter Server\vmon\vmon.exe --update_vcuser  <myusername>

Step 5: Restart all the vCenter services and check the new username in taskmanager


Note:- Additional steps would be needed if using windows integrated authentication for MS SQL. I'll share the info in my next post.

If the account used for db is native to the database then the above mentioned steps would work without any issue.