Distributed Cache/App Fabric configuration and planning for SharePoint 2013

Question

Farm: 5 servers (2 WFE, 2 APP, 1 SQL)

Here are some questions I have to avoid issues with the health analyzer around the distributed cache and app fabric service.

I'm planning to have distributed cache run in coallocated mode on the two WFEs and not all four servers.

I will remove the service from the 2 APP servers being that it will be installed with configuration tool.

Question 1:

At what time/step of the install and configuration should I change the app fabric windows service account from the farm account to a service account to avoid issues showing on the health analyzer?

Question 2:

What is the best practice to accomplish this? I've read that it can only be accomplished successfully with scripts but I'm curious if any other steps need to be done before or after to achieve this.

Answer 1

When AppFabric was installed as part of the SharePoint pre-requisites, it is configured to run under the credentials of the server farm. So you can't change it during the installation, but once the farm is configured, then you can modify the account from farm admin to something else. I think so far only way / best practices is changing the account by using powershell.

    $farm = Get-SPFarm $cacheService = $farm.Services | where {$_.Name -eq "AppFabricCachingService"} 
    $accnt = Get-SPManagedAccount -Identity domain_name\user_name 
    $cacheService.ProcessIdentity.CurrentIdentityType = "SpecificUser"     
$cacheService.ProcessIdentity.ManagedAccount = $accnt 
$cacheService.ProcessIdentity.Update() 
$cacheService.ProcessIdentity.Deploy()

Change the service account

After steps, i would verfiy the DC is up and running.

Answer 2

Looks like you are planning a new installation of SharePoint 2013. Might be worth to mention that you can deploy the Distributed to your needs with the AutoSPInstaller Script. You can specify where to install the Service. It also configures your DistributedCache with a service account that is used for "SharePoint Hosted Services".

Btw. it is Best Practice to install the DistributedCache on WFE-Servers, so keep this decision.