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

[joe]

Title: Naming conventions (quasi-OT)

I tend to recommend to keep the letters to as few as possible, especially in global orgs. The reasons being

 

1. To make support easier, it is easier to hear someone saying numbers over a staticy phone line at 3AM than letters. Also spelling conventions. Say someone says the Server named DataCenter needs to have its AD account reset... Ooops you reset the wrong one, the person who called is from London and they spell it DataCentre not DataCenter like you do you silly yank. ;o)

 

2. To cut down on the use of "bad" words.

 

 

 

So I have seen lots of standards, my favorite for servers is

 

xxx0nnnn

 

xxx - Building code, this matches the OU the machine is located in.

 

nnnn - 4 digit number that the site determines. Though usually the primary F&P server for the site is xxx00001, the secondary xxx00002, etc You could walk into any site in the world and as long as you know the site code (which is the router code) you could work out the primary F&P server. Helps make it easier to automate stuff too...

 

 

For clients, similar setup, xxx for site code and then S/N or asset number.

 

 

 

--

O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition - http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm 

 

 

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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brian Cline
Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 1:35 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.

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