| Poll |
| How do you name your servers? |
| According to its functionality |
 
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71% |
[ 65 ] |
| After your favorite TV/movie character |
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7% |
[ 6 ] |
| After a geek icon (Star Trek ships, etc.) |
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3% |
[ 3 ] |
| Date of your birthday |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Something else - please share! |
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19% |
[ 17 ] |
| Total Votes : 91 |
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| Author |
Message |
![[Post New]](/Sysforums/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif) 01/09/2010 09:50:11
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LauraB
SysAid Marketing
Joined: 01/07/2009
Messages: 106
Offline
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With the migration to 3 new servers last month, the IT team here at SysAid was confronted with a task as challenging as the migration: what to name the servers? Our admins were generous enough to get us all involved, so we went the democratic way and voted according to what we thought sounded “cool.” In other organizations, however, the practical aspects of IT win over and servers are named according to their functionality. Should the naming of servers be an art, or is server migration not the time and place to get creative?
After its functionality, after your favorite TV character, after planets in the solar system … How do you name your servers?
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01/09/2010 10:19:30
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andrewl94133
Super SysAider
Joined: 18/06/2008
Messages: 72
Offline
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As part of a large global organisation we have a complex global naming standard that every country has to follow:
CCLLLLnnnnnfff
CC = Country (UK = GB, Germany = DE, Ireland = IE, etc)
LLLL= location code (each location has a code, eg an office on Franklin Street in Washington would be WSHF)
nnnnn = 5 digit number, incrementing
fff = function of server, 3 character code
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02/09/2010 10:29:31
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Tim Sutton
Super SysAider
Joined: 15/07/2008
Messages: 65
Offline
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When the IT was still very much site by site, the servers were named Office_1 or Office_A etc.
Now we're looking a lot more globally we're going with role and location independant names. For example I've got a server called Orion that was originally a backup file server in one office but has been retasked as a primary file server in a newer / smaller office located at the other end of the country.
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02/09/2010 10:30:49
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Jonathan
SysAid Wiz
Joined: 17/06/2008
Messages: 326
Offline
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i came from a large company and everything was exchangedub01, fileserverdub02 etc i hated it
So now having left them a long time ago we have a much more fun approach
Server
All are planets and stars
Laptops
All our laptops are Shuttle craft from Star Trek
PCs are all start trek characters with each business unit a series and Each GM and Captain
Windows mobile devices are after ship regs in Star Trek is NCC
i know it a bit obsessive but i just did not like boring
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02/09/2010 12:05:04
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CarlH
Elite SysAider
Joined: 30/01/2009
Messages: 179
Offline
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We started using star names (Orion, Polaris) but quickly ran out of names that we could spell/pronounce
We're now using Simpsons and South Park characters
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02/09/2010 23:27:48
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Obelix
SysAid Wiz
Joined: 12/06/2008
Messages: 903
Offline
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Just in case somebody had enough remembering names and go practical by using their serial numbers...
BAD IDEA.
Server name must NEVER be numbers. Especially in windows environtment.
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06/09/2010 11:46:24
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HansT
SysAider
Joined: 13/10/2009
Messages: 35
Offline
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andrewl94133 wrote:As part of a large global organisation we have a complex global naming standard that every country has to follow:
CCLLLLnnnnnfff
CC = Country (UK = GB, Germany = DE, Ireland = IE, etc)
LLLL= location code (each location has a code, eg an office on Franklin Street in Washington would be WSHF)
nnnnn = 5 digit number, incrementing
fff = function of server, 3 character code
Similar here in a large orga too:
BR-SIT-Xnnnnn
BR = Branch
SIT = Site code, mostly first three letters of the city where the site is located
X = Server/Workstation/Laptops/Network equip/...
nnnnn = four or five digit system number
for workstations/laptops we've adapted nnnnn to YMMnn to easily keep track of age of systems.
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07/09/2010 07:58:56
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Tim Sutton
Super SysAider
Joined: 15/07/2008
Messages: 65
Offline
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HansT wrote:
andrewl94133 wrote:As part of a large global organisation we have a complex global naming standard that every country has to follow:
CCLLLLnnnnnfff
CC = Country (UK = GB, Germany = DE, Ireland = IE, etc)
LLLL= location code (each location has a code, eg an office on Franklin Street in Washington would be WSHF)
nnnnn = 5 digit number, incrementing
fff = function of server, 3 character code
Similar here in a large orga too:
BR-SIT-Xnnnnn
BR = Branch
SIT = Site code, mostly first three letters of the city where the site is located
X = Server/Workstation/Laptops/Network equip/...
nnnnn = four or five digit system number
for workstations/laptops we've adapted nnnnn to YMMnn to easily keep track of age of systems.
Just out of interest how do you guys who use site and / or role in a server's name deal with a server that gets retasked or moved? Also, if you rename the server how do you keep hardware information straight such as care packs etc?
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07/09/2010 10:27:15
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kdorfsman
SysAider
Joined: 01/07/2008
Messages: 1
Location: Stamford, CT USA
Offline
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I guess it depends on the number of servers. I've been in environments with 200+ servers. Those needed to be by functionality. It was usually something like location, function, an unique number (Sequential sometimes) and maybe if it's an R&D, Dev or Production server.
A production IIS server in London would be: LON-IIS-P01, LON-IIS-P02, etc.
With the same info, a Development Application server in Stamford would be: STA-APP-D01.
In my current environment, it's locations...In NY all servers are company name and NYC01 or NYC02 at the end. The guest workstations are the same NOMADNYC01, NOMADNYC02...
Here's a funny story about printer naming...which would be a good poll.
I've never liked using printer names like HP_LaserJet_01 because it seems so cold and impersonal. I like people to identify with their printers.
So in my current job, I named all the CT printers after constellations: AQUARIUS, ARIES, LYNX, HERCULES, ANDROMEDA, ORION, etc.
Then the people in the NY office made fun of my naming convention...so I renamed all the NY Printers to characters from a Dr. Seuss book call "On Beyond Zebra".
I still laugh when they have to tell me they can't print to FLOOB or SNEE or even better...ZATZ!
The moral of the story...don't mock your IT staff! 
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08/09/2010 15:13:41
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BobLindemann
SysAider
Joined: 02/03/2010
Messages: 2
Location: San Diego, CA USA
Offline
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Back in the day we named after space shuttles, but as so many people we quickly ran out of names. When redoing our entire environment about 8 years ago at the same time Arnold Schwarzeneger was gaining popularity in California in his political run for Governor, he was nicknamed 'Governator', so we picked up on that and named our Primary DC at the time Governator. All of our servers picked up on that and now are named with some sort of functional or location name and ending in 'nator'. ie Faxinator, terminator, webinator, exchanginator, etc. Strange, I know!! 
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Bob Lindemann |
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14/09/2010 15:40:19
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N8
SysAider
Joined: 05/11/2009
Messages: 8
Offline
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We name our servers after Transformers.
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15/09/2010 02:46:54
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nicks81
Super SysAider
Joined: 13/07/2010
Messages: 78
Offline
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Where I currently work, the naming convention isn't standard
Last place I worked had a great naming convention, based on the airport codes of Australian airports - eg 6075 is the Document Management Server number, so there was PER6075, MEL6075, SYD6075, BNE6075 etc
Found this a lot more intuitive when investigating outages as you only have one set of codes to remember, then applying the site code in front of it depending where the problem was
The same naming convention was also applied to assets, computers from Perth were in the PER7XXXX range, laptops in the PER8XXXX range, Sydney being SYD7XXXX etc
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15/09/2010 12:00:24
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birneyw
SysAider
Joined: 30/07/2009
Messages: 46
Offline
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We do it on two things. Name of the area it supports and then the last didgets of the ip address. We have 3 banks of 255 ips, each bank has a specific job. IE: servers, end users, secure end users. so our example would be a server on ip xxx.xxx.xxx.55 would be SER55, End user = EU55 and Secure end user SEU55
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15/09/2010 12:15:43
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AtomicDon
Super SysAider
Joined: 25/11/2008
Messages: 76
Offline
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Before I started they had been doing Greek Gods, but nobody new could keep track of what server did what so we went to functional names. Boring but very useful when troubleshooting what server does what.
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17/09/2010 07:33:56
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HansT
SysAider
Joined: 13/10/2009
Messages: 35
Offline
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HansT wrote:
BR-SIT-Xnnnnn
BR = Branch
SIT = Site code, mostly first three letters of the city where the site is located
X = Server/Workstation/Laptops/Network equip/...
nnnnn = four or five digit system number
for workstations/laptops we've adapted nnnnn to YMMnn to easily keep track of age of systems.
Just out of interest how do you guys who use site and / or role in a server's name deal with a server that gets retasked or moved? Also, if you rename the server how do you keep hardware information straight such as care packs etc?
Personally i don't use a role in the naming of equipment, for this purpose i use DNS names (like: antivirus, wsus, backup etc).
As for movement, we hardly move servers between sites. If really needed we disjoin/join from one domain to another.
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