Longest Naming Convention

Mishra

What is the longest naming convention you have run into?

I've seen some crazy names in my career. Switch/Router names up to 25/30 characters.

This comes up because of our SQL Naming instance convention that we went with. It's long and a bit confusing but does the job.

blargoe

I am attached to an environment that has 14-16 character server names. Drives me nuts.

SteveO86

I suppose it all depends on the person. I prefer to keep my device/server names maybe 8-10 characters tops.

First few characters depicts the location, next few its purpose, (all abbreviated) then maybe the model number. To each their own, that convention works for me, tells me where the device is and what kind of device it is. The model # is just extra information.

blargoe

I've seen people include lots of useless information. My latest pet peeve is the characters indicating that it is a physical or virtual machine. So, you're telling me I have to rename a server every time I P2V?

cyberguypr

At my old job a genius used the OS version as part of the name. As you can imagine OS upgrades happened and everyone was afraid of renaming the server. I left two months ago and they still had COMPANYNT01, COMPANYW2K01, etc.

Mishra

We had someone come from Bank of America and he wanted to name all of our network equipment to where you could find the server physically all the way down to the U of the rack... The name was just absurd.

SDFC2D1R4RK5U5SW5

Something insane like that... Stood for

SDF (air port code)
Colo 2
Data Center 1
Row 4
Rack 5
U 5
Switch 5

Everyone

I think they were gone before I started here, but I was told some tales about servers named "appnameNOTLIVE385" It was whatever the application name was, then "Not Live" meaning it wasn't in production, then the HP model number for the server.

Outside of our workstations, which are all 3 letters followed by 5 digits, we don't have a naming convention. People name their servers whatever they feel like. We have everything from 3 letter abbreviations to mythical creature names. It drives me nuts.

keenon

In naming network devices. I think one of the best i saw was when i was working a contract gig.

state code -site code- location designation- device type - device number

seems like alot but when you see it its pretty simple
TX-ABC-BBC-SW-01

I have actually used it in other jobs after seeing the 1 name convention abcdef.. it would take days to locate any device if you haven't been to that site alot. after changing it the support and engineer techs were able to locate stuff in minutes.

networker050184

keenon wrote: »

In naming network devices. I think one of the best i saw was when i was working a contract gig.

state code -site code- location designation- device type - device number

seems like alot but when you see it its pretty simple
TX-ABC-BBC-SW-01

I have actually used it in other jobs after seeing the 1 name convention abcdef.. it would take days to locate any device if you haven't been to that site alot. after changing it the support and engineer techs were able to locate stuff in minutes.

I'm a fan of the city/state/site-device role-number naming convention also. So a core router in Atlanta, GA at the XY location would be atlngaxycr01. Short simple and to the point.

earweed

I wish we had a naming convention where I work. It is a total mess and sometimes devices aren't labeled with the random names they have been given which makes it even harder when having to physically go to the device. Sometimes we have to go by the labels on the cables plugged into the devices (If the labels have the devices name)

Paule123

At least they were conventions I remember walking into a company and scanning for servers as there was zero documentation to find servers called "Fred", "Bob", "Room100". There must have been about 12 of these things which had to be tracked down

I normally go with:

3 Letter prefix
3 Letter description
2 - 4 numbers depending on size of company for device number

ie MSTSWC001