Do I need a SharePoint Server Install Account?

Question

Good Morning,

I'm building a new SharePoint Server 2019 farm and I am being asked to justify everything I am doing with Microsoft documentation. I don't find anywhere that I need an sp-install or sp-setup account for any valid reason other than if I need to implement power pivot down the road. Would it be totally against best practices if I use my elevated account to install and configure SharePoint rather than a separate, install/setup service account?

Here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/security-for-sharepoint-server/plan-for-administrative-and-service-accounts it talks about planning for accounts, but it says the Farm Admin account is the one used for setup:

Farm administrator user account The farm administrator user account is a uniquely identifiable account assigned to a SharePoint admin. It is used to run the following:
Setup
SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard
Domain user account.

Member of the Administrators group on each SharePoint server in the farm.
Member of the following SQL Server role (optional): sysadmin fixed server role.
If you run Windows PowerShell cmdlets that affect a database, this account must be a member of the db_owner fixed database role for the database or a member of the sysadmin fixed server role on SQL.

Thank you!
DM

Answer 1

Hi @Oliver Tech ,

To successfully install SharePoint 2019 we need at least three accounts: 1. SQL Server Service Account 2. SharePoint Farm Administrator Account 3. SharePoint Service Account. If you are using a test environment you could just use the Farm administrator user account (with right roles) to setup SharePoint 2019. And there is no harm if you just use the Farm administrator user account to setup SharePoint 2019. We recommend you to create a special setup account to better install you SharePoint if you are creating a product environment.

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