For a consistent environment you need naming standards, but the idea of a standard is a universal adherence and in IT there is no such thing. The first thing I started to look at is a naming standard for the servers themselves. Thankfully Microsoft has published a recommendation on this (available here) which is what we decided to follow since it is a simple one and is easy enough to use and remember.
Microsoft's published recommended naming convention which is aa-bbb-ccccc-dd. The definition of the format is aa is the country code, bbb is the city designation, ccccc is the server role and dd is the number of the server. If the server is part of a cluster, array or similar then last two characters of the server role indicate which cluster it is part of.
Samples:
The first domain controller in Redmond, USA would be: us-rmd-ad-01
- us = USA
- rmd = Redmond
- Ad = Active Directory
- 01 = First Server
The first BizTalk server in the second BizTalk cluster in Cape Town, South Africa would be: za-cpt-bts02-01
- Za = South Africa
- Cpt = Cape Town
- Bts02 = BizTalk Cluster 2
- 01 = First Server
The first MSCRM server in Auckland, New Zealand would be: nz-ack-crm-01
- nz = New Zealand
- ack = Auckland
- infr = Infrastructure
- 01 = First Server
However this is the only published naming standard I could find, so the naming for databases, ISA rules etc… have all been developed internally so I can’t disclose those.
This also brings to an end this series on HMC hosting, but fear not I have a quick 3 part mini-series on the top 3 tips I have for managing a HMC environment to keep busy with.