I was once dealing with a thread regarding naming conventions and needless to say I submitted my personal naming convention to the masses for their attention. Let me start out by saying that there is no such thing as a bad naming convention providing that you are consistent with all your devices. So if you want to call all your devices by Asset Tag, or Mac Address or serial number then that’s fine as long as you keep it up for your whole environment. So let me delve into my naming convention and ill explain on why I believe it is the best for 90% of small to medium sized bushinesses out there and how it can be modified slightly to meet another 5% of that same audience.
[DomainPrefix][Type][ServerRole][UniqueID] for servers and [DomainPrefix][Type][UniqueID] for everything else.
Domain Prefix
The domain prefix is a 3 letter abbreviation for the domain or organisation. When I create my domains I always prefix the domain with a 3 letter acronym (ie JHS for jhsdomain.jhsolutions.co.nz or TCT for tctdomain.tomsmithtrucking.com etc etc). The reason for this is because if you ever have to merge your network with another network (for any reason whatsoever) your devices will already be prefixed and be unique. The only unfortunate risk is obviously if you happen to merge with another network that has the same 3 letter prefix (which would be extremely unlucky for you). Needless to say the odds of that happening are quite low and the odds of networks merging are usually quite low in a small time frame. The only exception to this I find are government departments. If you are working in Government there is a high chance you will merge or take on or rename your organisation within 5 years haha.
Type
Type is for the type of device. Now here is a sub-naming convention because in order to be consistent we need to ensure we have abbreviations for every possible device we will use on our network.
- SRV for Servers
- DPC for Desktops
- LAP for Laptops
- TAB for Tablets
- SWC for Network Swtich
- RTR for Router/Modem/
- APN for Access Point
So for my domain the beginning of my devices are looking like JHSSRV for servers and JHSDPC for Desktops and so on and so on.
Role
Now role is purely only for servers. Embedding the main role into the name means that without even having to log on to anything IT staff can recognise what that server is doing. Its also easy to remember when you have multiple versions of that device.
- DC for Domain controllers (which usually have DNS and DHCP installed)
- FS for File Servers
- PS for Print Servers
- DA for Direct Access Servers
- CM for Config Manager
- DP for Distribution Point (SCCM role)
- SQL for SQL Servers
- LNX for Linux Servers
- EX for Exchange Servers
- HV for Hyper V Servers
- ESX for ESX Servers
- WEB for IIS web servers
Now normally I dont recommend naming servers after the applications they are hosting unless you are confident that the server will never host anything else for that lifetime. Some examples I have used are
- WM for WebMarshal
- MM for MailMarshal
Otherwise for generic Application servers i use
- APP for a multi homed application server
Unique Identifier
The last part of the device name is a unique identifier. For servers a generic 01 or 02 will work because unless you are a colossial behemoth of a company then your server numbers will not get into the double digits often. For desktops, laptops and other hardware devices departments usually have their own internal identifier (like a barcode of some sort etc) however suffice to say using a generic 3 digit unique Identifier is a reccomended option. This is because many medium sized businesses will easily have over 100 devices. If you have more than 800 employees I would recommend a 4 digit (or longer) unique identifier beginning 0001.
And so that brings us to how it looks in the real world
JHSSRVDC01, JHSDPC195 or JHSSWC15
Modifications – Location
I personally dont use a location tag in my naming convention because a) most people have laptops\tablets which are designed to roam and b) Servers tend to be virtualised meaning that if you have to move the guest to a host in a different data center you can do so without the naming convention being incorrectly labelled. However your environment might have a 3 site DR environment where you do need to know which site each server is in. In this case you might want to consider tagging the location into the name. Myself personally however I tend to not bother with a Location tag. This means that hardware can easily be redeployed without ever having to rename it due to a location change.
- AK for Auckland
- WG for Wellington
- CH for Christchurch
- DN for Dunedin
- NP for New Plymouth
- PN for Palmerston North
Now the best place to insert a location tag is [DomainPrefix][Type][Location][Role][UniqueID]. So If I only had one site (in Wellington) my devices are starting to look like JHSSRVWGDC01 or JHSDPCAK175 being broken up as [JHS][DPC][AK][175].
Summary
So there you have it. My guide to IT naming conventions and what I find works for both small, medium and even some large scale environments. The ability to memorise these names becomes extremely easy once you get to know the system. [JHS][SRV][DC][01]. If you have 5 domain controllers in your organisation then you know that they will be 01 to 05. If you are wanting to log on to an SQL server and you have 4 of them then [JHS][SRV][SQL][01] to [04] will be the convention. This naming convention is extremely flexible and serves as a great base plate for your environment.
Jas