Update the password for your storage account identity in AD DS

Applies to: ✔️ SMB file shares

When you domain join your storage account in your Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS), you create an AD principal, either a computer account or service account, with a password. The password for the AD principal is one of the Kerberos keys for the storage account. Depending on the password policy of the organizational unit for the AD principal, you must periodically rotate the password to avoid authentication problems. If you don't change the password before it expires, you lose Kerberos authentication to your Azure file shares. Some AD environments also delete AD principals with expired passwords by using an automated cleanup script.

Instead of periodically rotating the password, you can also place the AD principal that represents the storage account into an organizational unit that doesn't require password rotation.

Two options exist for triggering password rotation. You can use the AzFilesHybrid module or Active Directory PowerShell. Use one method, not both.

Option 1: Use AzFilesHybrid module

To regenerate and rotate the password for the AD principal that represents the storage account, use the Update-AzStorageAccountADObjectPassword cmdlet from the AzFilesHybrid module. To run Update-AzStorageAccountADObjectPassword, you must:

  • Run the cmdlet from a domain-joined client.
  • Have the owner permission on the storage account.
  • Have AD DS permissions to change the password for the AD principal that represents the storage account.
# Update the password of the AD DS account registered for the storage account
# You can use either kerb1 or kerb2
Update-AzStorageAccountADObjectPassword `
        -RotateToKerbKey kerb2 `
        -ResourceGroupName "<your-resource-group-name-here>" `
        -StorageAccountName "<your-storage-account-name-here>"

After you rotate to kerb2, wait several hours and use the Update-AzStorageAccountADObjectPassword cmdlet again to regenerate and rotate back to kerb1, so both Kerberos keys are regenerated.

Option 2: Use Active Directory PowerShell

If you don't want to download the AzFilesHybrid module, you can use Active Directory PowerShell.

Important

You must run the Windows Server Active Directory PowerShell cmdlets in this section in PowerShell 5.1 with elevated privileges.

Replace <domain-object-identity> in the following script with the appropriate value for your environment:

$KeyName = "kerb1" # Could be either the first or second Kerberos key, this script assumes we're refreshing the first
$KerbKeys = New-AzStorageAccountKey -ResourceGroupName $ResourceGroupName -Name $StorageAccountName -KeyName $KeyName
$KerbKey = $KerbKeys.keys | Where-Object {$_.KeyName -eq $KeyName} | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Value
$NewPassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -String $KerbKey -AsPlainText -Force

Set-ADAccountPassword -Identity <domain-object-identity> -Reset -NewPassword $NewPassword

Test that the AD DS account password matches a Kerberos key

After you update the AD DS account password, test it by using the following PowerShell command.

 Test-AzStorageAccountADObjectPasswordIsKerbKey -ResourceGroupName "<your-resource-group-name>" -Name "<your-storage-account-name>" -Verbose
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