Managed Account in SharePoint 2010

Microsoft has introduced a new feature in SharePoint 2010 called Managed Accounts. These days generally we use a Service Account while setting up any Web Application. and it may happen that this account will be used in multiple Web Applications. Now when we change the password for this account this needs to be changed in all the Web Applications using this account. Sometime it happens that we forget to change the password for some of the Web Apps. In that case these Web Apps will be down. Also it is a big burden to change the password perodically if we have multiple service accounts used in multiple web applicaiton.

Now with this new feature a Managed Account can be created in SharePoint 2010 and we need to set the password while creating the managed account. Then this account can be used while creating the Web Applicaitons. The cool thing about this that we dont need to provide the password while using this account when we are creating a new Web Applications which is using this Managed Account.

SharePoint can take the control of this service account. SharePoint 2010 can automatically do the password change for these managed accounts. While creating Managed Account, we can specify how long before the passord expiration it needs to be reset and SharePoint will change the password at the specified time without any intervention. Also if we can configure it to just send the mail to the users for notifying for the password changes and then we can do it on our own. Here is how you create managed account: