One vs. many domain user accounts in a server farm

Posted by mjustin on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by mjustin
Published on 2011-01-12T06:26:32Z Indexed on 2011/01/12 6:55 UTC
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We are in a migration process of a group of related computers (Intranet servers, SQL, application servers of one application) to a new domain. In the past we used one domain user account for every computer (web1, web2, appserver1, appserver2, sql1, sqlbackup ...) to access central Windows resources like network shares. Every computer also has a local user account with the same name.

I am not sure if this is necessary, or if it would be easier to configure and maintain to use one domain user account.

Are there key advantages / disadvantages of having one single user account vs. dedicated accounts per computer for this group of background servers? If I am not wrong, one advantage besides easier administration of the user account could be that moving installed applications and services around between the computers does not require a check of the access rights anymore. (Except where IP addresses or ports are used)

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