Defining SQL Server domain/AD service accounts during installation vs. after the fact. Anything outside of "personal preference/time saving"? Kind of a silly question, but, I'm installing multiple SQL Servers for a client, but they do not have a domain service account for SQL Server created for me yet. They will have one ready for me soon... Does it really make any difference defining the Service Accounts during installation vs. adding them after the fact via configuration manager?

Probably more of a personal preference/time saving question, but I was wondering if there was anything outside of that. I just prefer to have as much done during the installation process rather than going back and adding the domain account after the fact.
Although it is going to be a bit of a pain to go back and change all of them, even if it can be done with scripts, there is one factor that I would consider beyond all of the technical stuff that can obviously be addressed: Anxiety.

Given the two scenarios:


Installed with domain service accounts
Installed without domain service accounts and changed afterwards


Assume that something goes wrong a few days after all of these servers get put into production.  Let's say a Windows security update gets installed on domain controllers, or the organizations routers get patched, or some new security software gets pushed out to every server.  Suddenly, your SQL Servers stop working because they get login failures.  You may not know about the change in the environment.  If you went with scenario #1, you're going to have zero, or much less, anxiety that the installation/setup process was the cause of the issue.

If you used scenario #2, you are going to have more anxiety that you missed something, screwed something up, etc.  I would, anyway.  Some people wouldn't, but I think I lot of us would have a bit of panic.  Additionally, would other people in the project possibly start pointing out the post-install service account change if there was an outage of this nature?  Regardless of whether it is a reasonable concern, someone may start questioning anything that is out-of-the-ordinary.

So if it's a server or two and an outage isn't going to cause you any anxiety--no big deal.  But if an outage is going to cause anxiety, I would stick with scenario #1 if possible.