Taking ownership of the ArcGIS Server accounts

ArcGIS Server uses several local operating system accounts to access data and launch processes:

• arcgissom—The SOM account
• arcgissoc—The SOC account
• arcgiswebservices—The ArcGIS Web Services account
• arcgisstartup—An account used to run the ArcGIS Server AMI StartUp Service

  This service runs when you start an EC2 instance of ArcGIS Server.

These accounts are typically specified during the postinstallation, but with ArcGIS Server on Amazon EC2, the steps of the postinstallation are run before you even log in. Therefore, the accounts are created for you and are configured with random passwords.

If you want to change an account password, you can do the following:

Steps:

1. Click Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management.
2. Expand Local Users and Groups > Users.
3. Right-click the account name and click Set Password.

   You can ignore the Windows warning message about the password change causing a loss of information. This is not known to affect ArcGIS Server.

4. Type the new password twice to confirm and click OK.
5. If you changed the password of the account arcgiswebservices, complete the following steps to change the password of the application pool to which the SOAP and REST web applications are assigned:
   1. Click Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
   2. On the Connections panel, click your server name and click Application Pools.
   3. Right-click ArcGISServicesAppPool and click Advanced Settings.
   4. Find the Identity property and click the box to its right, which should say arcgiswebservices. Then click the ellipsis (...) button that appears.
   5. Choose Custom Account, then click Set.
   6. Type the account name, arcgiswebservices, followed by its new password twice as prompted by the dialog box.
   7. Click OK to save and close all the open dialog boxes.
6. If you changed the password of the SOM account arcgissom, complete the following to change the password under which the ArcGIS Server Object Manager service runs:
   1. Click Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services.
   2. Right-click ArcGIS Server Object Manager and click Properties.
   3. Click the Log On tab.
   4. Confirm the SOM account is being used and update the Password and Confirm password text boxes to match the password for the account.
   5. Click OK.
7. If you changed the password of the SOC account arcgissoc, complete the following to change the password under which the ArcGIS SOC Monitor service runs:
   1. Click Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services.
   2. Right-click ArcGIS SOC Monitor and click Properties.
   3. Click the Log On tab.
   4. Confirm the SOC account is being used and update the Password and Confirm password text boxes to match the password for the account.
   5. Click OK.
8. If you changed the password of the account arcgisstartup, complete the following to change the password under which the ArcGIS Server AMI StartUp service runs:
   1. Click Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services.
   2. Right-click ArcGIS Server AMI StartUp Service and click Properties.
   3. Click the Log On tab.
   4. Confirm the arcgisstartup account is being used (or another account belonging to both the Administrator and agsadmin groups) and update the Password and Confirm password text boxes to match the password for the account.
   5. Click OK.