How to: Change the Distributed Cache Service managed account 2013

When you get the annoying pink marker in CA and one of the issues it warns you about, is that ‘the farm account should not be used for other services’ In my case, the scripted install had set the ‘Distributed Cache Service (Windows Service)’ to use the  farm account as managed account. As the 2013 Central Admin is (or tries to be) helpful, it gives you the direct link to the: ‘Security’ – ‘General Security’ – ‘Configure Service Accounts’ and tells you to change it there.

To fix it, just click the link, find the service in the dropdown and select another Managed account in the lower dropdown. Then click ok…..but nooo…that one wont fly.
Changing the service account on this service cannot be done this way and has to be done using PowerShell…thats what you get back.

Well…after some short researching I found this to work ok: (first load the snapin, add-pssnapin microsoft.sharepoint.powershell)

$farm = Get-SPFarm
$cacheService = $farm.Services | where {$_.Name -eq "AppFabricCachingService"}
$accnt = Get-SPManagedAccount -Identity <domain\user>
$cacheService.ProcessIdentity.CurrentIdentityType = "SpecificUser"
$cacheService.ProcessIdentity.ManagedAccount = $accnt
$cacheService.ProcessIdentity.Update()
$cacheService.ProcessIdentity.Deploy()

(Where <domain\user> is the domain name and user name of the managed account you want to use instead.)

Note: Beware of the doublequotes if you copy the code…