RE: [ActiveDir] Naming conventions (quasi-OT)

[Mike Williams]

Title: Naming conventions (quasi-OT)

We name them by area, i.e. accounting, then a dash, and then a number 2 or 4, 2 = win 2000, 4 - XP, then a number starting at 001. When we move a computer to a new area, we do this a lot, we just rename the area part of the name. So if we have an accounting-4100, if it moves to marketing it becomes market-4100. If the top number is 110, the next new computer becomes, area-4111, assuming it's a XP machine.

 

All of the computers were named like yours when I came into this company, a lot of the users that the computers were named after hadn't worked at the company for 2 or 3 years. We renamed them all (about 100) over the course of a month or so, and moved them in active directory by area, it does make it a lot easier to keep track of them..

 

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf Of Brian Cline
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 12:35 PM
To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org
Subject: [ActiveDir] Naming conventions (quasi-OT)

I'm curious to see how some of you (especially at the larger corporations) name your domain-joined computers. At my company we've got about 110 computers in roughly , and for the longest time they've been named after the logon name of the user who primarily operates the PC. (Not a fan of that method myself.)

However, when naming or renaming a PC there are cases (such as preparing a replacement PC for a user) where there's already one with the desired name. Our network admin has a horrible habit of putting random numbers at the end when he runs into this problem, rather than using ADUC to remove a ghost computer object (or renaming the existing one when a new one is being prepared for said user). Of course this constantly frustrates me as I can never correctly guess a user's PC name when trying to remote control it during a support call.

I've had several ideas in the past, the most favorable being naming them by location then department, then numbering them (for example, CHS-DISP-01 would represent the first dispatcher PC at our Charleston terminal), and automagically renaming the "My Computer" icon on the user's desktop at startup time to reflect the computer name. This way we'd never have to worry about renaming a computer when an employee is terminated, and when I've got a user on the phone I can simply ask them to read the computer name to me. But I was curious to see how you guys go about naming your PCs and how you deal with problems similar to this.

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Brian A. Cline
Internet Applications Developer
G&P Trucking Company, Inc.
Direct:      803.936.8595
Toll Free:  800.922.1147 x8595