The Deployment Administrator role is a vital role in CRM and a mighty powerful role it is too because the user with the deployment administrator role can run the deployment manager console application.
It’s in the Deployment manager you can
- enable/disable organisations
- remove organisation
- add new organisations
- See how many licences you are using (blog link)
- Add more Deployment Administrators
The Deployment Administrator is an important role and this role is initially given to the account you used to install CRM. It’s important this user either creates another Deployment Administrator or that user is available to CRM Developers.
The reason this role is important to CRM Developers is because if you need to be a Deployment Administrator if you want to deploy plugins which have an isolation level = “none”. This is because the Deployment Administrator role has complete access to the various Active Directory groups and databases (and the Deployment Manager).
The best practice is to have 2 or 3 trusted users who are Deployment Administrators and I would recommend you have an account which is not linked to anyone’s personal active directory users but a CRM Admin user. This way, if a user goes on holiday it won’t halt CRM development.
How to add a Deployment Administrator
Go to the CRM Server with a user who is a Deployment Administrator
Open the Deployment Manager
Right click on Deployment Administrator and click – New Deployment Administrator
Add the details of the new Deployment Administrator
Other ways to Add Deployment Admin
You can add a deployment admin user CRM Powershell
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg197635.aspx
What if we don’t know who the Deployment Administrator is?
Oh dear you are in trouble! but if your deployment Administrator has left or is on holiday you can do it (WARNING UNSUPPORTED CHANGE) using the blog article and SQL script
http://markuserlandsson.wordpress.com/2010/09/08/add-yourself-as-deployment-administrator/
Why else do I need to know about Deployment Admins
It will often crop up if CRM Developers cannot register or unregister Plugins/custom workflows. If the plugin/custom workflow is deployed with Isolation Mode = “none” then the user must have the Deployment Administrator role.
CRM 2011 – Assembly must be registered in isolation
What if you are using CRM Online
If you are using CRM online you don’t have to worry about deployment administrators because all plugins are registered with isolation mode = “sandbox” and the user just has to be CRM Administrator.
CRM online doesn’t give you access to the CRM server, so it’s impossible to run the Deployment Manager.
Futher reading
This blog post by the CRM in the Field goes into quite a bit of detail
Hosk's Dynamic Blog 
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