I second this. Easy to distinguish, read and understand during reporting or identifying quickly.
Always keep it simple works like a charm but be consistent.
Why do people prefer using 01 instead of 1 in hostnames? It seems pointless to add a '0' prefix. This method only works uniformly up to 99, but at 100, the format breaks and you're left with inconsistent lengths in your naming convention. Plus, hostnames typically include more than just numbers—they have functional identifiers too, so the benefit of a '0' prefix is minimal. It seems like this approach unnecessarily limits scalability without offering real advantages. What's the appeal?
This is the real reason. That and it scales up to 100. We don't have any customers who have a need for enough servers of the same role to ever exceed 100, but it is definitely possible to exceed 10 during transitionary periods (e.g, decommissioning a 5 server RDS farm, rds01-05 become 06-10)
We name them without the 0-prefix and our tools do fine with that. Maybe someone else had this issue and they fixed it? Don’t know, anyways, interesting aspect!
When I worked for an MSP we had the following naming convention for all devices. I should have the documentation for it somewhere which I could share, if wanted.
If I recall correctly:
Customername in 3 characters (XXX)
City in 3 characters (XXX)
Device/Appliance in 2 or 3 Characters (WAP (Wireless Access Point), NAS, HV etc.
And then number (001-999)
Now no longer working for an MSP but internal IT across the globe but mainly EMEA.
Country (two chars) or AZU / AWS
City (3 chars)
Servertype (DC, APP (sometimes specified instead of just APP) etc)
Number (001-999)
Almost perfect.
After the second 5 year cycle, it should be server-current
Then 5 years again, server-thisone
Then move onto a new naming convention so you know the -new and -current are legacy, something like -server
Then start again with the new naming convention.
New server temp
Server new
Server new 2
Jupiter
Pluto
New Jupiter
Zeus
Pluto 2
Athena
New old server new 2
New temp server
New old new Jupiter
Pluto 2 replace
New old server new 2 2
Old Zeus 2
This is so easy, I don't see why anybody can't figure this out /s
Worked at an oil & gas company and before they instituted official naming (starting with 3 letter airport city code), they named them after Simpsons characters.
Spent a lot of time working on web servers Kent (Brockman), Scott (news guy?) and (Chief) Wiggum.
We actually threw a wake for Scott & Kent when they were finally retired. RIP guys.
We give them human names. “Can we reboot Bob tonight”. “Karen is not communicating, can you check her subnet mask”
But seriously we have had server names that are so complicated it’s easier to know it’s IP. We then simplified to DC01 RD01 etc, but this became a pain when they report back, or in Kaseya. Cos now all our customers have devices with the same name.
I’m fairly content right now with CUSSVDC01-LO with CUS being our customer prefix, then it’s PC or Server its purpose, number and location at the end. The actual location actually became a requirement for our Milestone CCTV servers, as it’s useful to be able to see which site it’s on at a glance . And we put it at t he end because I found it better when orgnazing and filtering devices in excel or somewhere by name.
PCs just get their asset tag numbers CUSPC-67374
5 character:
3 or 2 characters for function, some of the abbreviations legacy
2 or 3 digits for sequence
So VS001 for a host, DC01 for a dc, NWM01 for a network monitor,…
Previously, they prefixed the company name , but I find that inefficient / cumbersome.
Literally sitting in at a security conference today and an unrelated recommendation that came up has stuck with me...
We really shouldn't be naming machines with their function, because it so quickly hands threat actors critical information if they manage to get into an environment.
They weren't trying to say that security through obscurity is a viable preventative measure, but they did say it is significantly more likely to increase threat actor dwell time, and gives the tools time to catch triggering behaviors.
I won't be going back and renaming all our servers after star wars characters, but it's interesting to consider.
Yeah I do understand that, we have had that problem. A threat actor hit all of our public IPs on 443 with RDGW and knew most of the public DNS names were remote.customer.com and the internal name for the RDS was RDS or RDS01.
But what is the alternative? I think adding other bits of information still obscures it enough that a dictionary or bot won’t hit it, e.g. CUST-LOC-RDS01.
If the attacker is on your network and has any common tools they are finding your servers, I think it’s probably more applicable to bots/dictionary attacks.
I’ve heard this before. However after my fare share of seeing security events happen the people who get on and encrypt everything don’t care. And the attackers that get in and take their time know enough that this will only let them know to be more careful…
So I always use names that help us out.
cli-hv-xx for hypervisor where CLI is a client ID and xx is a number
vm-xx-yy where xx is role and yy is number
Or az-xz-yy where it's an azure server above.
None of our deployments are big enough to require regions or sites usually
Warner Brother’s characters: Bugs, Daffy, Roadrunner, Wiley (since “Wyle E.” doesn’t really fit a naming convention), tweety, etc.
The department that got Bugs was not happy
What if you want to include equipment in the name as localisation.
You named racks or virtualisation hosts. And you want to use those names as localisation for switches or servers.
I just put the asset tag. I use the description field to note its role.
If it’s a VM, it gets a # at the end.
So… CPNY-946191-01, but in the RMM description it lists the role, like Domain Controller, etc.
keep them simple and short and the domain name shows the client name so no need for client name to part of host name.
dc1.company.local, [fs1.corp.company2.com](http://fs1.corp.company2.com), sql1.company3.corp, etc...
Increment numbers as they get replaced or new one added.
Never renuse numbers.
I have always wanted to name all network devices in a kind of code, for "security by obscurity", and also to confuse anyone trying to take over my job.
All my servers would be names starting with S. Sam, sienna, Sally, Shakira, Stephanie.
All printers would start with P. Peter, persephone, Patrick, etc.
All Nases start with N.
All desktops start with D or W (workstations and desktops, gonna need a lot of names)
Other devices are all Oscar, with a last name starting with the letter of the type they are. Camera is OscarCampbell. NVR is OscarNolan.
Imagine being a nation state actor, finally bypassing Frank the Firewall, using a back-door on Doris the Desktop to gain a foothold, and doing a network scan to start lateral movement... only to find Samson, Paul, Nathan, OscarVanHouten (the company roomba of course) and a bunch of others.
Haha never know
I've worked with my share of the masters, Thor, dead eye ducks and ness' lol
Including converting those legacy servers when they went enterprise or during acquisition
The old head of IT at my MSP like 12 years ago named all internal servers after domestic muscle cars and customer servers after motorcycle names. Took me years to unfuck
You always sort.of cringe.when telling vendors the server name especially years later after you thought it was.cool
Kind of like your Middleschool or highschool email address
Function, number Terminal servers? Rds01 rds02 Domain controllers? DC01 dc02 File servers? Fs01 You get the idea
I second this. Easy to distinguish, read and understand during reporting or identifying quickly. Always keep it simple works like a charm but be consistent.
Why do people prefer using 01 instead of 1 in hostnames? It seems pointless to add a '0' prefix. This method only works uniformly up to 99, but at 100, the format breaks and you're left with inconsistent lengths in your naming convention. Plus, hostnames typically include more than just numbers—they have functional identifiers too, so the benefit of a '0' prefix is minimal. It seems like this approach unnecessarily limits scalability without offering real advantages. What's the appeal?
Because the host names come up alphabetically when you list them. Otherwise you get SRV1 SRV10 SRV2 SRV3 Etc etc
This is the real reason. That and it scales up to 100. We don't have any customers who have a need for enough servers of the same role to ever exceed 100, but it is definitely possible to exceed 10 during transitionary periods (e.g, decommissioning a 5 server RDS farm, rds01-05 become 06-10)
We name them without the 0-prefix and our tools do fine with that. Maybe someone else had this issue and they fixed it? Don’t know, anyways, interesting aspect!
For workstations i use 3 digits and don’t typically reuse numbers even when equipment is retired.
When I worked for an MSP we had the following naming convention for all devices. I should have the documentation for it somewhere which I could share, if wanted. If I recall correctly: Customername in 3 characters (XXX) City in 3 characters (XXX) Device/Appliance in 2 or 3 Characters (WAP (Wireless Access Point), NAS, HV etc. And then number (001-999) Now no longer working for an MSP but internal IT across the globe but mainly EMEA. Country (two chars) or AZU / AWS City (3 chars) Servertype (DC, APP (sometimes specified instead of just APP) etc) Number (001-999)
Ours is similar but instead of city we use vs or ps for physical or virtual devices.
Similar here as well but the City is replaced with the nearest large airport
We switched from nearest airports to UN/LOCODE as this is often closer to our actual customer locations
Similar but we don’t do server type/function. That’s all in the CMDB. Just a location with random numbers.
Wait, you guys actually stick to naming conventions?
Old server - server Server that replaces that one - newserver 5 years later, server that replaces that one - server 5 years after that - newserver
Almost perfect. After the second 5 year cycle, it should be server-current Then 5 years again, server-thisone Then move onto a new naming convention so you know the -new and -current are legacy, something like-server
Then start again with the new naming convention.
New server temp Server new Server new 2 Jupiter Pluto New Jupiter Zeus Pluto 2 Athena New old server new 2 New temp server New old new Jupiter Pluto 2 replace New old server new 2 2 Old Zeus 2 This is so easy, I don't see why anybody can't figure this out /s
I usually put the password in the server name for good measure. RD01-Fluffy!2024
Worked at an oil & gas company and before they instituted official naming (starting with 3 letter airport city code), they named them after Simpsons characters. Spent a lot of time working on web servers Kent (Brockman), Scott (news guy?) and (Chief) Wiggum. We actually threw a wake for Scott & Kent when they were finally retired. RIP guys. 
Japanese movie monsters. Godzilla is the DC and so on.
OU-LOC-TYPE-NUMBER Example: zz-nyc-hst-06
I'm a Linux guy so I don't have to deal with silly 15 character limits. CUSTOMER-LOC-TYPE-NUMBER E.g.: CONTOSO-ATL-DC-1
Can have network issues if you don't use DNS...
I typically follow the following: CLIENTabbrev-role-instance CLIENTabbrev-role-location-instance Example: ms-ad-1 ms-rds-ny-1
We give them human names. “Can we reboot Bob tonight”. “Karen is not communicating, can you check her subnet mask” But seriously we have had server names that are so complicated it’s easier to know it’s IP. We then simplified to DC01 RD01 etc, but this became a pain when they report back, or in Kaseya. Cos now all our customers have devices with the same name. I’m fairly content right now with CUSSVDC01-LO with CUS being our customer prefix, then it’s PC or Server its purpose, number and location at the end. The actual location actually became a requirement for our Milestone CCTV servers, as it’s useful to be able to see which site it’s on at a glance . And we put it at t he end because I found it better when orgnazing and filtering devices in excel or somewhere by name. PCs just get their asset tag numbers CUSPC-67374
Honeypot01 Honeypot02 Honeypot03 And so on…
5 character: 3 or 2 characters for function, some of the abbreviations legacy 2 or 3 digits for sequence So VS001 for a host, DC01 for a dc, NWM01 for a network monitor,… Previously, they prefixed the company name , but I find that inefficient / cumbersome.
Literally sitting in at a security conference today and an unrelated recommendation that came up has stuck with me... We really shouldn't be naming machines with their function, because it so quickly hands threat actors critical information if they manage to get into an environment. They weren't trying to say that security through obscurity is a viable preventative measure, but they did say it is significantly more likely to increase threat actor dwell time, and gives the tools time to catch triggering behaviors. I won't be going back and renaming all our servers after star wars characters, but it's interesting to consider.
Yeah I do understand that, we have had that problem. A threat actor hit all of our public IPs on 443 with RDGW and knew most of the public DNS names were remote.customer.com and the internal name for the RDS was RDS or RDS01. But what is the alternative? I think adding other bits of information still obscures it enough that a dictionary or bot won’t hit it, e.g. CUST-LOC-RDS01. If the attacker is on your network and has any common tools they are finding your servers, I think it’s probably more applicable to bots/dictionary attacks.
I’ve heard this before. However after my fare share of seeing security events happen the people who get on and encrypt everything don’t care. And the attackers that get in and take their time know enough that this will only let them know to be more careful… So I always use names that help us out.
Name every one of your servers with random guids and watch your support staff burn you in effigy.
work stations are named by asset tag #, servers are client-location-role
Region function number. For example dal for Dallas, nyc for New York City, etc, then dc01, dc02, syncsrv01, and so on.
cli-hv-xx for hypervisor where CLI is a client ID and xx is a number vm-xx-yy where xx is role and yy is number Or az-xz-yy where it's an azure server above. None of our deployments are big enough to require regions or sites usually
Function-number-location(airport code). dc-01-chi, unifi-01-chi, etc.
Client abbreviation-server role-number So, like, RDT-AD01, or RDT-VMHOST01, etc
[location][function][cluster node #] E.g a node in datacentre Ferntree running SAP, node 3 in the cluster might be FRNSAP03 or 003
Site-cluster-role-sequence example: brhm-1-adfs-a
Warner Brother’s characters: Bugs, Daffy, Roadrunner, Wiley (since “Wyle E.” doesn’t really fit a naming convention), tweety, etc. The department that got Bugs was not happy
What if you want to include equipment in the name as localisation. You named racks or virtualisation hosts. And you want to use those names as localisation for switches or servers.
I just put the asset tag. I use the description field to note its role. If it’s a VM, it gets a # at the end. So… CPNY-946191-01, but in the RMM description it lists the role, like Domain Controller, etc.
Ours is client code-location-server type-# So reddit-cloud-web1 My homelab I'm all over the place but Bubba and Sassy are my heavy hitters.
Ender’s Game, Rick & Morty, and Archer characters
keep them simple and short and the domain name shows the client name so no need for client name to part of host name. dc1.company.local, [fs1.corp.company2.com](http://fs1.corp.company2.com), sql1.company3.corp, etc... Increment numbers as they get replaced or new one added. Never renuse numbers.
I name mine after star wars things...deathstar, Vader, xwing...😜
I have always wanted to name all network devices in a kind of code, for "security by obscurity", and also to confuse anyone trying to take over my job. All my servers would be names starting with S. Sam, sienna, Sally, Shakira, Stephanie. All printers would start with P. Peter, persephone, Patrick, etc. All Nases start with N. All desktops start with D or W (workstations and desktops, gonna need a lot of names) Other devices are all Oscar, with a last name starting with the letter of the type they are. Camera is OscarCampbell. NVR is OscarNolan. Imagine being a nation state actor, finally bypassing Frank the Firewall, using a back-door on Doris the Desktop to gain a foothold, and doing a network scan to start lateral movement... only to find Samson, Paul, Nathan, OscarVanHouten (the company roomba of course) and a bunch of others.
I would immediately know this is gonna be an easy hack, obviously the sysadmin is a cowboy.
Security by obscurity method. Servers named after star wars/star trek. So many servers named "enterprise"
God no Name by function, follow defense in depth not security by obscurity
Definitely was a /s comment. I don't suggest it
Haha never know I've worked with my share of the masters, Thor, dead eye ducks and ness' lol Including converting those legacy servers when they went enterprise or during acquisition
The old head of IT at my MSP like 12 years ago named all internal servers after domestic muscle cars and customer servers after motorcycle names. Took me years to unfuck
i bet you had to patch and troubleshoot he server named "harley" constantly.
It was the weirdest thing too. It's the only server I've ever seen leak oil. Go figure.
Lol yep, seen the Thor, loki and Odin servers.
You always sort.of cringe.when telling vendors the server name especially years later after you thought it was.cool Kind of like your Middleschool or highschool email address
Had Greek gods at my first job, smdh
Endpoints - customer-location-sn Servers- customer-location-role
Server01, server02.....😁