I don't particularly enjoy installing SharePoint, I've done it a
million times and really it's quite a boring process. When I do end
up having to install it, I generally use a simple 4 account
method:
- Admin (SPAdmin) - Used for installation
and administration of SharePoint
- App Pool (SPAppPool) - all web apps
except central admin run with this account as their identity
- Services (SPService) - App pool account
for central admin and the SSP service account
- Search (SPSearch) - Used for all search
services
Generally I'm installing SharePoint for my own dev/test
purposes, so this suits just fine. I think it is also fine for
small scale installations or instances when the admin in charge of
account creation isn't interested in creating 8+ accounts. To be
honest I think a lot of the time using the 8+ accounts is a tad
overkill, and people are just blindly following 'best practices'
without applying them to their specific environment. But being more
of a dev type than an infrastructure type I don't feel qualified to
formally make that recommendation.
Even for a development server it is really important to have some
separation of accounts. It is in your best interest to simulate a
production scenario as best you can. Take for example if you were
to use the SharePoint admin account as an application pool
identity. You may have permissions to do things on your dev server
(in code) that will probably have issues in a production
scenario.