Service account in SharePoint?

Question

I am a newbie in SharePoint and I need to install SharePoint 2013 for learning purpose , can I use only one account ? if not what's the service account required ?

Answer 1

For learning purpose, as a short answer: Yes you can use only one service account , but it's not recommended from a security perspective .

I think you need to learn so it's a good chance to learn the best practice to install and configure SharePoint with the required service accounts

So it's recommended to create the following Service accounts during preparing your SharePoint farm based on your requirements :

• SQL_Service: To run SQL Server service.
• SQL_Admin: For the SQL Server administrator.
• SP_Admin: To set up SharePoint .
• SP_Farm: To Configure SharePoint farm .
• SP_Crawl: if you will configure Search Service.
• SP_UserSync: if you will configure User Profile Sync Service. (Require Replicate AD Permission)
• SP_WebAppPool: Web Application Pool Account.
• Sp_SrvPool : Application Service Pool Account.

For more details check SharePoint 2013 Service Accounts Best Practices Explained and Plan for administrative and service accounts in SharePoint 2013

Answer 2

Yes you can single service account for sharepoint farm.but it is not a good practice and also put your farm in risk.

With separate service accounts for each services give you many advantages

• security, if you use a single service account then chances are a person(who get the password) do bad thing with farm or steal data.
• stability, if you use single account for everything than if password expired for the account or account get locked, whole farm will go down.
• manageability, with single account maintenance and management of sharepoint is nightmare.

Mostly, people use single account in Dev environments but production it is highly adviceable to use dedicated service accounts for different roles. Mr Qasses explains that.

I would recommend you for learning go for best practice.