Not An Administrator For Analysis Services Tabular

A couple of weeks back I installed SQL Server 2016 on my personal machine, including SSAS Tabular. Yesterday I created a new Tabular model project in SQL Server Data Tools. When I had to choose where to locate the model – integrated or a server workspace – I got the nice error message saying I wasn’t a server administrator on the Tabular server.

I was almost 100% certain I added myself as an administrator during SQL Server set-up and the configuration of the Tabular server. I logged in the server, went to properties and then to security. The list of server administrators was as empty as a merchant’s soul (yep, I googled that one). I either forgot to add myself as an admin (not likely, because according to the docs the set-up doesn’t continue if you don’t select an admin), or something fishy was going on.

So I tried to add myself as an administrator, however no dice: I didn’t have the correct permissions. A quick search engine search (sorry) revealed I should be able to, because local administrators do have admin permissions in SSAS Tabular. This was starting to get annoying.

However, a bit more thorough search showed me the solution: you had to launch SSMS as an administrator. Good old UAC, you strike again, old foe.

And lo and behold, I could add myself as an admin! Which means I don’t have to run SSDT as an admin every time I want to create a new Tabular project.