So what exactly is the CLIUSR account?

From time to time, people stumble across the local user account called CLIUSR and wonder what it is, while you really don’t need to worry about it; we will cover it for the curious in this blog.

The CLIUSR account is a local user account created by the Failover Clustering feature when it is installed on Windows Server 2012 or later. Well, that’s easy enough, but why is this account here? Taking a step back, let’s take a look at why we are using this account.

In the Windows Server 2003 and previous versions of the Cluster Service, a domain user account was used to start the Cluster Service. This Cluster Service Account (CSA) was used for forming the Cluster, joining a node, registry replication, etc. Basically, any kind of authentication that was done between nodes used this user account as a common identity.

A number of support issues were encountered as domain administrators were pushing down group policies that stripped rights away from domain user accounts, not taking into consideration that some of those user accounts were used to run services. An example of this is the Logon as a Service right. If the Cluster Service account did not have this right, it was not going to be able to start the Cluster Service. If you were using the same account for multiple clusters, then you could incur production downtime across a number of critical systems. You also had to deal with password changes in Active Directory. If you changed the user accounts password in AD, you also needed to change passwords across all Clusters/nodes that use the account.

In Windows Server 2008, we learned and redesigned everything about the way we use start the service to make it more resilient, less error prone, and easier to manage. We started using the built-in Network Service to start the Cluster Service. Keep in mind that this is not the full blown account, just simply a reduced privileged set. Changing it to this reduced account was a solution for the group policy issues.

For authentication purposes, it was switched over to use the computer object associated with the Cluster Name known as the Cluster Name Object (CNO)for a common identity. Because this CNO is a machine account in the domain, it will automatically rotate the password as defined by the domain’s policy for you (which is every 30 days by default).

Great!! No more domain user account and its password changes we have to account for. No more trying to remember which Cluster was using which account. Yes!! Ah, not so fast my friend. While this solved some major pain, it did have some side effects.

Starting in Windows Server 2008 R2, admins started virtualizing everything in their datacenters, including domain controllers. Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) was also introduced and became the standard for private cloud storage. Some admin’s completely embraced virtualization and virtualized every server in their datacenter, including to add domain controllers as a virtual machine to a Cluster and utilize the CSV drive to hold the VHD/VHDX of the VM.

This created a “chicken or the egg” scenario that many companies ended up in. In order to mount the CSV drive to get to the VMs, you had to contact a domain controller to get the CNO. However, you couldn’t start the domain controller because it was running on the CSV.

Having slow or unreliable connectivity to domain controllers also had effect on I/O to CSV drives. CSV does intra-cluster communication via SMB much like connecting to file shares. To connect with SMB, it needs to authenticate and in Windows Server 2008 R2, that involved authenticating the CNO with a remote domain controller.

For Windows Server 2012, we had to think about how we could take the best of both worlds and get around some of the issues we were seeing. We are still using the reduced Network Service privilege to start the Cluster Service, but now to remove all external dependencies we have a local (non-domain) user account for authentication between the nodes.

This local “user” account is not an administrative account or domain account. This account is automatically created for you on each of the nodes when you create a cluster or on a new node being added to the existing Cluster. This account is completely self-managed by the Cluster Service and handles automatically rotating the password for the account and synchronizing all the nodes for you. The CLIUSR password is rotated at the same frequency as the CNO, as defined by your domain policy (which is every 30 days by default). With it being a local account, it can authenticate and mount CSV so the virtualized domain controllers can start successfully. You can now virtualize all your domain controllers without fear. So we are increasing the resiliency and availability of the Cluster by reducing external dependencies.

This account is the CLIUSR account and is identified by its description.

One question that we get asked is if the CLIUSR account can be deleted. From a security standpoint, additional local accounts (not default) may get flagged during audits. If the network administrator isn’t sure what this account is for (i.e. they don’t read the description of “Failover Cluster Local Identity”), they may delete it without understanding the ramifications. For Failover Clustering to function properly, this account is necessary for authentication.

1. Joining node starts the Cluster Service and passes the CLIUSR credentials across.
2. All passes, so the node is allowed to join.

There is one extra safe guard we did to ensure continued success. If you accidentally delete the CLIUSR account, it will be recreated automatically when a node tries to join the Cluster.

Short story… the CLIUSR account is an internal component of the Cluster Service. It is completely self-managing and there is nothing you need to worry about regarding configuring and managing it. So leave it alone and let it do its job.

In Windows Server 2016, we will be taking this even a step further by leveraging certificates to allow Clusters to operate without any external dependencies of any kind. This allows you to create Clusters out of servers that reside in different domains or no domains at all. But that’s a blog for another day.

Hopefully, this answers any questions you have regarding the CLIUSR account and its use.