How do choose the names for your servers?

Question

Most companies I've worked at have naming conventions for servers. For example, all famous scientists or all famous racecourses. My current company doesn't have this system and as we're getting in a whole bunch of shiny new servers it's time we did. So... how does your company name it's servers?

Answer 1

Characters in Greek Mythology for printing and TS(1,2,3, etc) for Terminal Servers. I don't know about the others.

Answer 2

At present, we use a similar naming convention for servers than the ones you've probably seen. Such as river names, Munro mountain names, island names, bird names. But these can run out, and leave you pondering a new solution for a while.

Other companies I've seen use Asset numbers as their hostnames, that way the asset number of the machine is also its hostname. But again, if you are using servers, trying to remember complex names over relatively easy ones can help, but when you browse for them, the description details what the server is despite it having a complex name.

hope this helps

Answer 3

My company has a huge network that spans over 250 sites. Each site gets a 2 character code that forms the first 2 characters of the name. The next character denotes the type of resource 'S' for server, 'W' for workstation, 'L' for laptop, etc. The next 11 characters are free-form and are assigned locally. Some locations use numbers sequentially. Others define them by function and a few use the machine's serial number.

Larger networks don't have the luxury of making up "cute" names. It's not professional for one thing and you run the risk of name duplications. And you also run the risk of offending someone.

Answer 4

Try logical naming/abbreviation, such as by location (state, city, region etc..), type (production or development/test), function (database/db, mail, web, nameserver/ns, etc...), followed by three digits and optional letter if it is a cluster with x amount of nodes.

examples:
tx-hou-p-db-103n1
(host is node 1 of production datbase in houston texas)
(103c would indicate it has 2 or more nodes)

az-phx-d-wb-255

The 3 digits at the end would be the short way to reference the server. All databases are in range 100-199. All web hosts are in range 200-299, and so on.

"255 is down", just that short message would indicate that it is a web host.

You can go a little further and indicate that production hosts are x00-x49, x50-x99 is dev/test. "255 is down", a development web host is down.

Every system would have a unique 3 digit suffix.

Answer 5

Its up to you.Try to use logical names so people can understand them.I name them by the role of the server.If its a domain controller I name them DC1,DC2 ect.If an Exchange server I name them Exch1,Exch2,ect.Have a guess for a file server.

Answer 6

I use Greek letters. Simple: Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma... The nice thing is you can use the actual letter itself (i.e. Beta - ß) on documents and labels, which adds a fancy touch.