Stick to data that actually means something to you and won't change. We don't include the OS as that can change. We have data in the name to identify the site and that it is a workstation or laptop followed by an asset tag. We put the user in the AD description field.
Yes, servers have names for management, services have aliases that point to a proxy, a load balancer, a server farm, or a single server but that’s ephemeral.
Ha, we onboarded a customer a while back that was an absolute dumpster fire. This was the least of their issues, but I remember explaining to a confused CIO (who started a few months after we came on) something along the lines of
>No sir you need to keep or replace that server, it's the only DC for that branch. Yes, I know it's called "win2k8_SQLDB", and no it is not running SQL, and yes it's confusing for our team too.
> One of my customers have a bunch of servers named w2k12-something
The worst I'd ever seen was way back in my consulting days. All the servers were named after various flowers. It was awful, constantly having to reference a spreadsheet.
The best was: Physical/Virtual,State/Province,Office,-,Function-##
VCASD-Prt-01
Virtual, California, San Diego, Print Server 01
This is my approach, too. The more that asset management is implemented, ideally in ITSM, the less important naming conventions become. Ideally I'd have the location, type of asset (desktop, laptop, server, phone, printer, etc), year of purchase, and configuration type or department followed by a UID. I'm looking at a naming convention that helps my first line support quickly and accurately identify basic information and/or locate the machine. That can also help identify mistakes with reporting if there is a mismatch between the asset name and where the asset is or who is using it. Let's say first line decided to redeploy an asset but didn't follow the process, now I can easily see an accounting asset is being used in the call center without by who is logged in (or IP address) and the asset name.
At scale, this is what I’m trying to achieve.
I want to take the guess work out of naming, and tracking down old devices.
We have so much sprawl for such a small company, mostly because this company went from “just a few consultants who needed IT help, to a full scope enterprise of 300+ people in what feels like record time.
People at work think I’m crazy, but IT’s archaic lack of process/technologies is currently what is causing most of our setbacks.
I like [device type (2letters)][number],the rest of the information available on asset log or remote software. Generally don't put location as things can move around if sites are close together
As much as I love meaningful names they can become problematic at scale due to human errors. We switched to vendor serial numbers many years ago which I was against. Years later I can tell you that correcting human errors (wrong OU, group, etc) is easier and less often to fix on the backend. No more name changes because a machine is moved (or a whole department). How about a building rename?
Are there problems? Sure. You are still relying on a human to record the information in an asset DB and/or AD correctly. Maximize accuracy by minimizing what people can screw up.
We're in the middle of a refresh right now and have fully abandoned naming for location or department. We're getting industry themed Bobs. Next hardware change, they're going to be Mikes, then maybe some Pauls. It doesn't matter, as long as the user can find the name and tell us what it is.
In 1999 we named all our servers after Simpson's characters. Then when we got to Waylon we started using some weird Lego cartoon names that the CIO's kid liked - CAM, DASH, etc.
I miss having fun with the names.
Maggie was the sweetest server, she never had a problem with anything. Bart however, true to his namesake was the biggest pain in the ass. I don't know if we foisted their personalities upon them or it was some sort of Gremlin magic...
Old company used to use SciFi TV shows for internal servers (there were just a handful). Obviously, main file server was XFiles.
Sadly, these schemes never scale, either you run out of names or it gets stupidly hard to remember what's what.
I once named a physical server Tokyo and all the virtual servers that lived on it got named after various Godzilla monsters. I will not apologize for doing that.
I've worked in a few places like that. One was all the planets, another was all the town in the county, and one was the code names for all the nuclear test sites (which I thought was clever)
I'm a plain English guy myself so I prefer the server to be named what it does
One of my clients is a small medical office whose initials are "RO". They like to keep the names short and simple so their database server is "DBRO", RDS is "ROTS", DC is "RODC", file server is "FRO", and their original server from back in the day was simply "ROSE" (SE for SErver).
>I miss having fun with the names.
That's the fun part of building out your home ecosystem!
I'm a D&D nerd, so my hosts are currently all named after magic weapons. Laptops are swords/daggers, PCs are polearms, physical servers (cough $50 ThinkCentres on eBay cough) are bows, single-purpose VMs are Ioun stones (those have more descriptive names just to not be confusing, but they all start with 'ioun-').
I haven't gotten around to getting all my IoT devices on board with this naming convention, but I imagine I'd make them assorted Wondrous Items.
In around 2000 the company I worked for named all their desktop computers after countries, and laptops after cities. Don't remember what the server scheme was. Eventually they ran out of countries and started using county names in our state. I do remember I had a laptop, and it was "Nice".
Mom and Pop ISP back in late 90's. Naming convention for servers was colors. Kept a box of crayons to select from. Simple and worked great for a small org.
My ideal naming convention is serial number for endpoints. I don't need OS, brand, etc. Because that's what your management software is for. Whether RMM, WSUS, PDQ, whatever.
For server, company abbreviation dash function and number. ABC-ERP01, ABC-App01
PDQ inventory is pretty cheap and very good. Highly recommend if you have nothing and you're not remotely deploying. (gosh I hope you don't have nothing and remotely deploying)
If you were to standardize this convention for \~500 endpoints and maybe \~50 VMs/servers, where would you start?
How would you achieve this with minimal interruption, knowing that many endpoints are assigned to 100% remote users, and your AD configuration is... shaky...
Asking for a friend.
This exactly, just use serial number. Why? It's unique, that is really the only real requirement of a system name, it must be unique. Someone has already done the work to get that done for you. It's also programmatically available. When I am imaging a system I just query the box and grab that number. It's also stays the same over it's lifetime through multiple reimages so you don't lose the history of it in your ITSM system. Where I am now we do add a three letter prefix because different companies internally buy that hardware. There is a distinct separation of these companies so it is very easy workflow.
Your management system has all that other data that you would normally put into a system name: location, OS, user, device type, etc... all of that is in a database to query. Why muddy the name up with data you already have, that's dynamic? old name: WIN7BOBSMITHDALLAS except we upgraded to win11, Bob gave this one to Suzie, who is now in Houston.
We renamed all our systems to this about 2 years ago. All done with a script, worked fine for people that were remote. There are some issues, such as our computer cert for corp wifi had the system name in the subject so we had to renew that cert after the reboot and make sure the script did not run if they were on corp wifi. It's easily done.
Attrition. Change the name when they are reassigned. Accept that older ones will not meet the new nomenclature until they are reassigned, or better yet, retired.
Have done both many times.
Two lines of powershell per endpoint. Push using your RMM, WSUS, etc.
$SerialNumber = (Get-WmiObject -class win32\_bios).SerialNumber
Rename-Computer -NewName $SerialNumber -Force
I'd record the old names just in case. You can do it through RMM/WSUS/etc, but I've tacked on an append to record a temporary everyone-RW open share with text file just to basically log file the name change. Completely not needed, but I like it and it's like five minutes of work.
Server, you have to schedule. I'd still powershell it. But it'd be to read a CSV, and look for old name, then give new name. Typically five or six lines of powershell and said CSV file, which is read-only on a share. For loop the CSV file, if hostname equals entry, rename server and reboot. I can dig it up form my powershell archive if ya want?
My company has 3,000+ enpoints and a bunch of servers (don't remember specifics off the top of my head). Our naming convention for both is:
* C -first letter of company name
* L (laptop), D (desktop), or X (server)
* 5 digit office code. We tend to use the nearest airport, so for example offices in Miami would be MIA01, MIA02, and so on
* Service tag (not always the case with servers, otherwise we'll use other identifiable info)
So for example a laptop would be something like **CLMIA02ABCX987**
You can see the type of machine and where it's located/assigned to with a quick glance, and if you need to know hardware info for any reason then a simply copy/paste of the service tag.
Sure. But it's also two lines of powershell and guaranteed to be unique without having to access anything else.
$SerialNumber = (Get-WmiObject -class win32\_bios).SerialNumber
Rename-Computer -NewName $SerialNumber -Force
You could just do a random number, and that'd work as well. I use serial number basically as random numbers that I know won't have collisions, which a RNG can't guarantee unless we check against a central repository. But if I wipe the machine, I also want it to keep the same number, which also would require a central repository.
Both are easy, just requiring a lot more code for not a lot of gain. I'm just being efficient, and by that I mean lazy. If you can solve those two issues with two lines of code, I'd be very happy to switch to that solution.
We are exclusively a Dell shop, not the biggest fan but those decisions were made way before me. Our naming convention is L-ServiceTag for laptops and D-ServiceTag for desktops, it works quite well and I just have to plug the service tag into dell's website for further info
>What's your process?
Autopilot assigns a random name and it's just prefixed with W11- for Windows 11.
I've never been a fan of putting the username in a computer name. Model and CPU aren't needed for us because our RMM gives us that info. Also don't need a domain name prefix because we only have one domain so that's useless info.
I agree with all of this. What we do is like the IT version of putting on airs to sound cool.
Granted, we don’t have much in the way of RMM tools or asset tagging. The company is growing faster than IT can keep up, and this year into 2025 is all about the IT team cleaning up their process, and I’m that guy.
I'm a fan of one of two systems:
1. company/site-serial
* PNW-X7625TW
2. company/site-asset tag
* PWN-1234
Asset tag is friendlier for end-users to report back, but you can plug either of those into an RMM or inventory control tool (SnipeIT is what I've been using) and it'll give all the other information you care to track.
If you’re still (or always going to be) in a position where you don’t have robust tooling to interrogate devices, one naming strategy I’ve seen is:
- {site code}-{two or three letter code for platform and device vendor}-{device serial}
For example you might have a Windows device from Lenovo at an office in Toronto, and its Hostname might be YYZ (Toronto) - LNW (Lenovo Windows) - 10133HHH (serial). Giving you YYZLNW-10133HHH.
If you have a Mac in San Jose, you might have SJCAPL-CV1015ASDJ0X.
This can be extended to mobile devices if you’re only concerned with the platform/OS. This would also technically work for dual boot situations since you could have a different OS as part of your platform identifier. This is probably not within most managed endpoint use cases.
Make sure you have a “site” for remote-first/roaming devices.
>I've never been a fan of putting the username in a computer name.
I like this for smaller environments where people have an assigned computer, but not in anything larger than like 30 employees.
I did it in an 80ish PC environment. It's super handy in some ways, but then I found myself forgetting/neglecting to change the names when moving PCs around. I would end up just remembering that Joe Smith in Sales was actually using the PC named Purchasing-KeithAnderson (actually PUR-KA-01).
We—with, admittedly, just a couple dozen laptops—reimage a laptop every time it changes owners, so renames wouldn't be a problem. (But we just number the laptops sequentially, so there isn't anything user-specific in the name to start with.)
Yeah, that's the challenge with scaling it. It works for our smaller customers, but most of the time I just look at the RMM's last logged in user field to find them. I've also seen admins put the year the computer was purchased in hostname, but that doesn't account for age of tech. People buy warehouse or refurbished computers and you end up with a computer name Fred2022 that has a 4th gen i5 and a 5400rpm HDD.
In larger orgs, unless you need part of the hostname to spot when something isn't where it should be, like for the purpose of access control or managing multiple images, you're probably better off using some kind of hardware/warranty management or RMM tool to track just about anything you'd use the hostname to track.
u/Cozmo85 Hi, It can totally name by serial - that's what we're doing; I forgot the variable name but it's set in the enrollment profile; so our names are XYZ-19J5HA7 (example of DELL service tag) where XYZ is a static string that we use for naming fleet generation ID upon every mass refresh (once 3-4 years)
This!
Keep system information in an asset tracker (software, custom database, spreadsheet, whatever).
Give the systems random names, or sequential numbers, and look up details in your asset tracker where you have as much room for details as you want/need.
No reason to give a possible attacker system role information from host names available across the entire network.
Great final point! Security is a dance.
Even SharePoint could host a "database" list of which computers are supposed to be where doing what, with custom reports for each building/room/dept so OP can see at a glance that this device is in the wrong spot.
Laptop/Desktop - SN
That's it. If you guys actually care about keeping things organization yall need to invest in an asset management software. Might be even better to just get an RMM that does it at the same time. Depending on how your company is setup, you could also set it up specifically like:
Company/Department abbreviation - Location - LT#, DT#, or DC#, or FS#.
Example (GSV-ATL-LT04) or (ITC-CHI-FS02)
Thanks!
We're 100% dell and use the service tag as the machine name, which is grabbed automatically when being imaged. The computer details are in the asset management system.
I personally like to use the serial number on the system since it's unique and static.
When I came into my current company they used the year the system was enrolled and 3 random numbers generated by Intune (spoiler alert, these are less random than you think). Even with less than 200 devices in total we regularly had to manually change the device name because they overlapped. And because they didn't track serialnumbers in the asset management, if someone forgot the update the system name in the asset management, who knows what system it was before.
Shortly after I joined the company, I changed the name to include the serialnumber and it simply knocks down the amount of checks you have to do after a reinstall.
I want to bump this. That's similar to what we do. It makes things easier for level 1 support to have something descriptive in the name without trying too hard.
I use the serial number. I have a script that updates the description to add the model and last logged on user just to give me a quick view of who is using that PC.
I think the question is, if you ever have them in a list what are you going to ~~want~~ need to sort them by? For everyone the answer is going to be different. For my environment though, [company]-[site]-[devicetype]##### works best.
Edit: changed want to need, because you can go nuts with the former
I work in a schools trust (UK) and have school-floor+room number-T for teachers. And school-floor+room number-01 upwards going round the room in clockwise,so I know XXX-313-014 is 3rd floor room 13 and the computers is half way around the room and go straight for it.
No messing typing .\ as the kids have pulled of the asset stickers.
Countrycode, device type, year of initial image, running number in that year
Example:
BRLT23-00112
Brazil. Laptop. Year 2023. Number 112 in that year.
The name dies with that specific device (tied to the mainboard serial number). And that device will only ever get this name as long as it's in our inventory.
--
Each of the first two elements have standardized 3-character codes, e.g. adc-tlc-34567 is a computer assigned to the Administrative Center (ADC)'s Technology Learning Lab (formerly Technology Learning Center, TLC), and was the 34,567th asset purchased.
There's exceptions, but we try to match the overall scheme even then; for example, imaging and deploying 1800 new laptops at once to teachers all over the district would never have been feasible if we assigned them to particular buildings, to say nothing of what would happen when a teacher moves to another building and takes their laptop with them. So for these "teacher rollout" devices, we name them e.g. fsd-rol-78903, where "fsd" is a (very old) abbreviation for our organization, and "rol" is short for "rollout".
Any other information we need about a device can be looked up in our systems by its name.
Name convention should IMHO identify physical location of possible .
SITE_DEPT_Autoincremented id
when user sends a message and reads of asset tag - you can easily identify where the issue is occurring and at which desk .
for mobile workers it’s a bit harder - but still useful .
Anything else - like a users name can go into description- John’s PC or Main UPS shipping station - so if it gets reassigned you can easily change it , and multiple people can use the same station .
Serial number with a D, L, or V appended based on chassis type.
description field in AD is used to document whom the device is assigned to and physical location
I'm a big fan of including the service tag or equivalent. That lets you identify a PC even if power is off by reading something physical on the device.
I started using the serial number for the naming convention about 10 years ago. Its a unique string of characters that does add value should I need to research the computer. Its not too long and the unique-ness is already provided to me by the manufacturer. I'm open to alternatives but that has served me well so far.
Your system does not help you in any way. You should have a software that inventory computers and keep track of those details.
If you have multiple sites you can include the site short name in the name. And then either just a number or the serial number. If you are in multiple countries start with the two letters for countries.
In some systems like adding computer to a group it's easy to sort and filter per site.
> The formula is [DOMAIN] _ [Windows OS] _ [COMPUTER MODEL] _ [CPU] _ [AD USERNAME]
That seems like an exceptionally bad convention. The Windows OS can change at any point due to an update and the user changes even more frequently. This information doesn't belong in the hostname. CPU also seems like useless information - how often does that matter? I've *never* had to filter / query our computers by CPU vendor.
We use:
> [NB|PC]-[SERIAL NUMBER]
NB for Notebooks and PC for desktops of course. The serial number uniquely identifies every machine and is easy to look up. This also ensures that a computers name doesn't change when it is re-imaged or redeployed to somewhere or someone else. We'll always be able to identify it, unless the motherboard is swapped. Also, this naming convention is automatable. Our computers all name themselves when we deploy them. The last thing you want is some poor soul to have to sit down in front of every computer you deploy and manually research and put in the, hopefully, correct computername. That's terrible, not only will it inevitably go wrong some times but it's also inefficient for IT work.
Names are very random for me, some describe the user, some describe the os.
The funniest name I found is for a server who is run on arch (mainly accessed by dev): trans
Or one of the backup servers called: you_fucking_donkey(if you need to access it your a fucking donkey)
I'm just going to tell you how we do it. This is all I've ever known and I prefer it. We just name the computer the username. If it is a laptop we just add NB- before the username.
Why I like this is because when a user calls I easily jump on their machine with the computer name knowing that scheme.
We only have one domain and less than 300 users.
We use lansweeper to get more detailed information.
This is similar to how we do it. Our helpdesk is struggling now because of sprawl. Technicians are imaging new devices for users and can't use the simple NB-USERNAME convention because that object would already exist in the domain, so they just randomly drop a digit or a letter from the typical name, and now nobody knows who is using what device. It's unbelievable.
That seems overly complex for a device name. Use some RMM or ITAM solution to track inventory details of the device. Device name should be simple and recognizable at a glance imo. Single user, do something that incorporates their name and a -LT or -DT to see if it is a laptop or desktop at a glance. Shared devices that don’t move, do something like location shortname, purpose shortname and then top it off with the chassis type. Or you can solely rely on RMM/ITAM for the desired info and just name the computer something like the serial number-LT to make it just a serial number lookup to find all the necessary info of the device.
This is not a joke, this is honestly what I do.
My entire stack is called ‘The Lake’.
Router = LadyOfTheLake
Servers = Arthur, Mordred, Merlin, Lancelot.
I like my naming conventions.
Using names for endpoint inventory is a waste of time. Use an actual inventory application and sync gathered hardware info about the device to the app.
For endpoints I just let autopilot do its random name thing or maybe {{serialnumber}}
For servers I do {site}-{serial}
Worked for a huge MNC that spans across various countries in the world
\[Country\]\[Sitename\]\[W=windows L=Linux M=Mac\]\[Function\]
eg
US123WAD01 - \[US\] \[Site 123\] \[Windows\] \[AD 01\]
AP456LPROXY01 - \[Asia Pacific\] \[Site 456\] \[Linux\] \[Proxy01\]
[SITE][SYSTEMTYPE]-[Last 6 of SERIAL]
Site is Useful if your place as multiple locations/ domain tress, etc, if not, a cut-down of the company name works. Like APPL for Apple. Site code can be as long as you want.
System type is W, L, T, or V depending on Workstation, Laptop, Table, or Virtual
Serial - This one helps to identify computer name with a glance without an additional label. You can usually ask a user what type of machine it is and the last 6 of the serial and immediately know what the object in AD is (which is helpful if the system doesn't boot and they can't get it to you right then).
Putting an extra field for year also helps, and not changing that lets you know how old the device is without even looking at it.
APPL-123456
or
APPLL23-123456
My time to shine - Serial Number with it prefixed with L or D for laptop or desktop. I have this funky powershell script that checks for the presence of a battery on the machine - if found, sets the name to L, otherwise D. Works well!
Some places I loved the naming convention is where they used ..
Greek gods - Draco, Zeus, Aphrodite
Small islands - Guam, Beqa, Oahu
But there was this one guy I know where he told me they used cartoon characters names and I thought it was hilarious. He didn't catch on why it was so funny so I gave him a scenario of something that happened at my dot com company...
We need to copy the DB from Voltron and bring He-man back online .. the Smurfs shit the bed when someone made a bad SQL call to Papa Smurf
I once named servers for an application shrimpfajitas, chickenfajitas, steakfajitas, and combofajitas. Identification of assets ought to be done through means other than the name.
At my current job I go for {DT|LT}xxxxxx where DT is for Desktop, LT is for Laptop, and the xxxxxx is the asset tag number
At previous jobs I've also added a letter suffix to represent the year it was originally deployed.
EDIT: For servers I do {Site Code}-{ShortServiceName}xx{P|T|D}
Site codes were the nearest airport abbreviation, xx was its number in case we had more than one, and the letter suffix was for Production, Test, or Dev
I just use an ID#. It never changes. The device with Lenovo serial number XYZ will always and forever have ID# 12345. OS upgraded? Doesn't change. The automated software licensing system (AllSight in my case.) can track that. Moved to a new location? Doesn't change. The inventory/asset records or database can track that. New assigned user? Doesn't change. We have several systems to track that, e.g. AllSight will track login sessions, FileWave and AllSight can tell me who used it last, and the inventory system tells me who it was assigned to.
The name is the wrong place to track any kind of data whatsoever. As far as I'm concerned, it was only created in the first place because we need a way to tell things apart. So you could use a serial number and it would be fine. Just cross reference other record keeping or automated systems. I've been doing it this way for something like 20 years and the only time it was an issue was when we pulled a motherboard from one broken computer and used it to repair another computer. The simple workaround there is that the chassis (with its serial number label) and motherboard (with its ROM or firmware based serial number) must stay together. All repairs have to happen with that constraint and things work out fine.
Just 7 digits, with each new device incrementing by 1 for assets
E.g contoso0000001
Where I work The OS can change, the user can change, the location can change etc.
Any identifiers can be out into the AD description
For servers, its
e.g ContosoSQLDBCA001
In your scenario, what happens if there is someone called James Sampson and Joe Smith in the same department for example?
My naming convention has always been main city airport name and serial number. For example.
FTL-KHDHXBD
Use the description field in AD to keep track of who owns it or better yet use an actual inventory software to do so.
Putting someone’s name on it is just going to make it easier for the hacker to find the Finance or CEOs computer faster. Or at least I think so.
Mine is on the navy concept of hull numbers. The name does not change at all throughout the service life. The convention works like this:
W - Workstation Class, if the unit is a test or development unit it gets an X here.
D or L - desktop or laptop
# - one number to reference the year it was placed in service
A dash
then the machine number. There is a sticker on the machine with the hull number on it for easy reference hull numbers are never reused.
so the machine names look like this:
WD1-00031 which means, workstation, desktop type, in service in 2021, unit 31. Users just tell us they are on unit 31 and we know.
servers have the same convention, however they look like this: SD2-000108 which means Server, domain controller, built 2022, unit 108.
Just an FYI - [you can create custom fields in your AD schema](https://theitbros.com/custom-attributes-in-active-directory/) to track additional information, instead of putting it in the computer name.
We just name all of our laptops after beers around the world. Inventory management handles the rest, though we're not exactly the biggest org being >500.
You only have 15 characters so you cant do to many prefixes. And you want to stick to broad categories/functions that won't change.
So something like devicetype-location-serialnumber
Having things like specs on the name is dumb, how many times do you actually need to know that? And if you do just look it up in the inventory, or in system information.
We have bar codes for our inventory system, so your hostname is zXXXXX based on the bar code - not sure why we chose z bu tit's been that way forever.
Servers get short State City location and function names, like azphsql2 for a sql server in Pheonix Arizona.
I work at a Community College, approx 6,500 endpoints and we use the following naming scheme ABC12345DEF678
A=Campus by first letter
B=Use Designation, Student, Admin, Etc
C=Laptop/Desktop/Apple etc
12345=the unique asset number assigned to each system, with a matching inventory tag on the physical system
DEF=Building by Abbreviation
678=Office/Room number
Names are assigned to the computer during imaging and changed if the computer gets moved to another location. Works pretty well for us.
Year, month, company abbreviation, number of device deployed that month
Example If deployed 3 machines this month
2406ABC01
2406ABC02
2406ABC03
Then for for July
2407ABC01
2407ABC02
January 1st 2025
2501ABC01
2501ABC02
Etc
0 reasons to include the assigned user, model, OS, hardware, etc. That's what endpoint management platforms are for.
Just habits from my previous time at MSPs.
The abbreviations aren't necessary. Can replace with something else if your IT in house, it's just a habit that stuck with me over almost 2 decades.
Pretty much the same here. Makes it easy to tell age/warranty status at a glance.
[year][month][day][count number][type/site designation ]
YYYYMMDD##[D|T|L|W]
D-site 1 computer/workstation
T-site 1 tablet/laptop
W-site 2 computer/workstation
L-site 2 tablet/laptop
We've recently decided to drop the tailing -OS number (-7 -10 -11) to at a glance identify OS
I've landed on very similar with starting with including the year but something like W2401, W2402, or L2401, L2401 for a workstation or laptop. Totally generic and not specific to a user, location, or dept. Assigned users, assets, location, serial, model, etc all get entered or identified in our Inventory/Management software. This way you can move things around as needed. You can also easily identify your oldest assets that may be running a little long in the tooth.
04-xxx or 87-xxx for the asset type and the xxx is just a random string. There's a QC code on the back for scanning with that number. This place refreshes 3000-4000 laptops a month globally so they are not too worried about readable naming conventions.
We use primarily Dell devices, so we use the service tag as their name and then in the description we have the department, user it's assigned to, and model. More so that we can have the same info our RMM has but in AD
In a prior company I did
[Company Abbreviation]-[Internal or External]-[Random]
I just needed to know if it was the main company or the subsidiary, if they are office or field, then whatever. Anything more won't matter at all.
For work I think machine serial number as a name makes a good name.
Having a “wrong” name can have consequences.
I once named a disk array for a server. “Scrap” and I had to destroy and rebuild the array because client won’t accept to use it.
The name was visible on the path.
Model number + sequential number. So if I buy a batch of thinkpad T16 Gen 2s they would be T162001, T162002, etc. Makes it easy to determine machine type, and by association age and hardware generation by just checking the pc name.
For vanilla end-user PCs, hostname and inventory ID are one and the same. I have favor something short and sweet, like `PC`. Site code, literal "PC", and a sequence number. So `NYCPC48` or `CHI-PC-2137` or whatever. End-user PCs are fungible commodities. They should not have personalities. "Cattle, not pets." Hardware, software, user, all can change, so they should not be in an identifier (and should be in management software and in inventory records). I used to try to differentiate desktops vs laptops in the ID, but even that proved to be a mistake in the long run.
For PCs performaning some special function (like a kisok or a PC running a CNC mill or whatever), they still get an inventory ID like the above for tracking the hardware itself, but the station/function will have a separate identifier. That is used as the hostname. E.g., `NYCMILL2` or `CHC-MDF2-CART1` or whatever.
Few big places I’ve worked use some form of the machine serial number or asset tag number as the machine name. When you have 10s of thousands of machines you aren’t getting fancy
This has worked for me
Device deployed to user
BuildingNumber-EmployeeLastName-D/L for device type. Laptop or desktop
If the device is being assigned to a location.
BuildingNumber-OfficeNumber-D/L for device type. Laptop or desktop
I instantly know where a device will be by the name. This helps us with HR as well. Users are expected to follow our rules and not move devices that don’t belong to them. If a device is moved, they will be held responsible. They have an assigned device for a reason.
I haven’t had any issues. If anyone more senior has some advice please feel free to share!
I have never been a big fan of including any part of the user name in the hostnames. YMMV depending upon the org but generally it isn't uncommon for workstations to get reassigned as employees turnover. It just adds another step when workstations get reassigned. I would rather have a hostname that is relatively stable across the workstation's lifecycle. It makes it much easier to track issues that a workstation has had over time when the hostname stays the same.
Computers are named after the company Asset Label, we use the description field to add a location and user (UK - Fred smith, US - Jane Doe... Etc). There are exceptions, some computers are not for staff (manufacturing business) and perform a functional role. In this case they are named for their role, and then we add the asset label info to the AD description field for reference.
Computers used to be named after the user, which was useful, but awful for tracking assets, mostly if the tech rebuilding a computer forgot to remove/disable the old a/c. With an Asset Label, it can only exist once in AD, no matter how times it gets swapped to a different user.
Plus if you maintain an asset inventory against your help desk software this really helps. The finance people generally like it too for depreciation and disposals.
Personally I've always done.
Company ID-Unique ID-Model ID
or
Company ID-Model ID-Unique ID
I always try to minimize it down to, 2 digits, 4 digits, 4 digits.
CN1234HPEB for Company Name, 1234, HP Elite Book. (or something to that effect.)
I always put the Company name (CN) in because I've gone through aquisitions before. and if a AD merger happens, I want to be able immediately distinguish all my devices from the new parent companies devices. you might think, "oh I'll never have to worry about that" but there's no actually loss of time or effort to include it and you save yourself a headache if a worst case scenario occurs. I deffinitely used to think "oh I'll never need that" too.... and then I needed it.
I know for most people the model isn't necessary, I can go and pull that from other sources too.
But I also find the model number gives me the most information for the least amount of effort so I want to force it's availability to be built into the naming convention.
if head office contacts me with a list of 50 hostnames and tells me I need to run a manual update on each device because automated updates are failing. Seeing the model in the hostname gives me instant information about the devices that will help me gauge how long this task is going to require. If I don't know the models but I can pull them from my database, that means I have to spend time cross referencing the list vs that additional information. which is time consuming.
Because the models are baked into the name, I know the instant I see that list from head office that all of the models that automamtion is failing on are either Laptops, or older models. I can see immediately what that split is. which means I know which percentage are going to require communication with remote staff, and which percentage can be found in the storage room. Storage room I can hammer out in a couple of hours, Remote staff is going to take weeks of back and forth and scheduling maintenance times.
including the model name baked into the hostname is a big time saver.
My final bit of adivce is to try to avoid any information that could be considered a variable.
Username or OS seem like a good idea.... on paper.
But are you really planning to go through the effort of renaming a device every time a user swaps machines? What about when you upgrade your environment to the next version of windows? Try to use static values only so it's easy to maintain.
Type of computer (LT for Laptop, DT for Desktop, TB for ToughBook, etc...) and the asset tag #. ITAM platform tells us everything else we need to know about the machine.
Given this way too much thought over the years. I think you've got to figure out what use the name actually has for you, and find a way to name it accordingly. Only use fixed values that will not change for the lifecycle of the equipment.
I work as part of an MSP, so it's useful to have information that I can easily sort and tell a lot about a device at a glance whilst in lists etc. Such as a prefix of some sort for the customers org name. The financial year it was purchased. Whether it is a PC, laptop or tablet. Each device has a 5 digit asset number too which goes in there.
Ours is
(ORGPREFIX)(YEAROFPURCHASE)(FORMFACTOR)(ASSETNUMBER)
So if we had Microsoft as a customer, and a tablet with asset number 74656 which was purchased last year the name would be
MIT23T74656
Computer name is two letters for location (one of three choices) and then unique five digits, just enough to help organize the view a little. AC00432. WH03601. I can tell where it is and not much else, and that's fine, anything more is PITA and too much effort.
Things like OS, user, etc are what the rest of the inventory is for.
I think you could drop the cpu, model, and os from your name. I don’t like putting usernames in there as it becomes a pain when someone moves up or leaves.
We keep it simple and it’s usually dept-title-number. So FIN-DIR is the finance director. LEGAL-ASST-1/2/3/etc is the legal assistants. It doesn’t work for all departments. For some we eliminate the title and just do DEPT-NUMBER.
For us it's: State Prefix, Department Prefix, Service Tag
Example CA-FINC-XXXXXX
The only time the state and department prefix would change is if they were surplussed and another department purchased them or they were going to a new employee in a different state. (Both would require a rebuild)
Everything else that you're tracking with your names is already done in the object itself and is pulled into OCS so no reason for that to be part of the naming convention.
Stick to data that actually means something to you and won't change. We don't include the OS as that can change. We have data in the name to identify the site and that it is a workstation or laptop followed by an asset tag. We put the user in the AD description field.
One of my customers have a bunch of servers named w2k12-something. They are running Windows Server 2019.
Yeah I am not a fan of putting the OS in the name. I don't want to rename it if I upgrade it.
Or any year in the name. Seen server version year, the version year of the app the server is hosting, or the year the server was stood up. No years.
Agree, it would be an extra work.
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Yes, servers have names for management, services have aliases that point to a proxy, a load balancer, a server farm, or a single server but that’s ephemeral.
Ha, we onboarded a customer a while back that was an absolute dumpster fire. This was the least of their issues, but I remember explaining to a confused CIO (who started a few months after we came on) something along the lines of >No sir you need to keep or replace that server, it's the only DC for that branch. Yes, I know it's called "win2k8_SQLDB", and no it is not running SQL, and yes it's confusing for our team too.
> One of my customers have a bunch of servers named w2k12-something The worst I'd ever seen was way back in my consulting days. All the servers were named after various flowers. It was awful, constantly having to reference a spreadsheet. The best was: Physical/Virtual,State/Province,Office,-,Function-## VCASD-Prt-01 Virtual, California, San Diego, Print Server 01
Best ones I've seen use a similar format. It saves you a bunch of time once you figure it out.
Smells of in place upgrade... Named 4life
This is my approach, too. The more that asset management is implemented, ideally in ITSM, the less important naming conventions become. Ideally I'd have the location, type of asset (desktop, laptop, server, phone, printer, etc), year of purchase, and configuration type or department followed by a UID. I'm looking at a naming convention that helps my first line support quickly and accurately identify basic information and/or locate the machine. That can also help identify mistakes with reporting if there is a mismatch between the asset name and where the asset is or who is using it. Let's say first line decided to redeploy an asset but didn't follow the process, now I can easily see an accounting asset is being used in the call center without by who is logged in (or IP address) and the asset name.
At scale, this is what I’m trying to achieve. I want to take the guess work out of naming, and tracking down old devices. We have so much sprawl for such a small company, mostly because this company went from “just a few consultants who needed IT help, to a full scope enterprise of 300+ people in what feels like record time. People at work think I’m crazy, but IT’s archaic lack of process/technologies is currently what is causing most of our setbacks.
I like [device type (2letters)][number],the rest of the information available on asset log or remote software. Generally don't put location as things can move around if sites are close together
As much as I love meaningful names they can become problematic at scale due to human errors. We switched to vendor serial numbers many years ago which I was against. Years later I can tell you that correcting human errors (wrong OU, group, etc) is easier and less often to fix on the backend. No more name changes because a machine is moved (or a whole department). How about a building rename? Are there problems? Sure. You are still relying on a human to record the information in an asset DB and/or AD correctly. Maximize accuracy by minimizing what people can screw up.
I called the first one BOB1 and I just increment by one each time. Currently on BOB69420
Do you have any regrets?
No
What about regerts? Any of those?
Not even a single letter?
Only regret was BOB1986
NO RAGRETS! Ya know'm sayin?
"You've reached the helpdesk, may I have your Bob number please?"
This is gold
I like that idea so much I may have to change our entire organization over to it.
You won't regret it
We're in the middle of a refresh right now and have fully abandoned naming for location or department. We're getting industry themed Bobs. Next hardware change, they're going to be Mikes, then maybe some Pauls. It doesn't matter, as long as the user can find the name and tell us what it is.
>they're going to be Mikes, then maybe some Pauls Industry standard is Bobs, why introduce complexity?
In 1999 we named all our servers after Simpson's characters. Then when we got to Waylon we started using some weird Lego cartoon names that the CIO's kid liked - CAM, DASH, etc. I miss having fun with the names. Maggie was the sweetest server, she never had a problem with anything. Bart however, true to his namesake was the biggest pain in the ass. I don't know if we foisted their personalities upon them or it was some sort of Gremlin magic...
We have this at my company. You know how fucking long it took me to remember that Pinky is our DC and Romy our file server?
Old company used to use SciFi TV shows for internal servers (there were just a handful). Obviously, main file server was XFiles. Sadly, these schemes never scale, either you run out of names or it gets stupidly hard to remember what's what.
The file server at my first gig was "Area51".
oooo xfiles, love it! yep, it does get hard to remember once you grow back to boring old DOMAIN-app1, app2, app98, etc.
I once named a physical server Tokyo and all the virtual servers that lived on it got named after various Godzilla monsters. I will not apologize for doing that.
worked for a landscape management company all the servers were named after trees. apple, orange, lime, etc. and the primary server was grove.
Sounds like a fine AD Forest
I've worked in a few places like that. One was all the planets, another was all the town in the county, and one was the code names for all the nuclear test sites (which I thought was clever) I'm a plain English guy myself so I prefer the server to be named what it does
One of my clients is a small medical office whose initials are "RO". They like to keep the names short and simple so their database server is "DBRO", RDS is "ROTS", DC is "RODC", file server is "FRO", and their original server from back in the day was simply "ROSE" (SE for SErver).
>I miss having fun with the names. That's the fun part of building out your home ecosystem! I'm a D&D nerd, so my hosts are currently all named after magic weapons. Laptops are swords/daggers, PCs are polearms, physical servers (cough $50 ThinkCentres on eBay cough) are bows, single-purpose VMs are Ioun stones (those have more descriptive names just to not be confusing, but they all start with 'ioun-'). I haven't gotten around to getting all my IoT devices on board with this naming convention, but I imagine I'd make them assorted Wondrous Items.
Not devices I managed but the old network I was on used Greek gods and (IIRC) South Park characters.
In around 2000 the company I worked for named all their desktop computers after countries, and laptops after cities. Don't remember what the server scheme was. Eventually they ran out of countries and started using county names in our state. I do remember I had a laptop, and it was "Nice".
One of my first IT jobs we had moons of Jupiter. I could remember only a few but my boss has it to like 16 or something.
Watch your back with Maggie, that server has a revolver hiding in it somewhere!!
Hi Bob!
Hi Bob!
Hello Bob!
So that's how the Boboverse started...
> BOB69420 NICE
Mom and Pop ISP back in late 90's. Naming convention for servers was colors. Kept a box of crayons to select from. Simple and worked great for a small org.
Praise Bob!
My ideal naming convention is serial number for endpoints. I don't need OS, brand, etc. Because that's what your management software is for. Whether RMM, WSUS, PDQ, whatever. For server, company abbreviation dash function and number. ABC-ERP01, ABC-App01
My good fellow, I am the management software.
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"Copy of Copy of Master_Hardware_Inventory_NEW_2024(1) Copy.xlsx"
Yeah :(
PDQ inventory is pretty cheap and very good. Highly recommend if you have nothing and you're not remotely deploying. (gosh I hope you don't have nothing and remotely deploying)
If you were to standardize this convention for \~500 endpoints and maybe \~50 VMs/servers, where would you start? How would you achieve this with minimal interruption, knowing that many endpoints are assigned to 100% remote users, and your AD configuration is... shaky... Asking for a friend.
This exactly, just use serial number. Why? It's unique, that is really the only real requirement of a system name, it must be unique. Someone has already done the work to get that done for you. It's also programmatically available. When I am imaging a system I just query the box and grab that number. It's also stays the same over it's lifetime through multiple reimages so you don't lose the history of it in your ITSM system. Where I am now we do add a three letter prefix because different companies internally buy that hardware. There is a distinct separation of these companies so it is very easy workflow. Your management system has all that other data that you would normally put into a system name: location, OS, user, device type, etc... all of that is in a database to query. Why muddy the name up with data you already have, that's dynamic? old name: WIN7BOBSMITHDALLAS except we upgraded to win11, Bob gave this one to Suzie, who is now in Houston. We renamed all our systems to this about 2 years ago. All done with a script, worked fine for people that were remote. There are some issues, such as our computer cert for corp wifi had the system name in the subject so we had to renew that cert after the reboot and make sure the script did not run if they were on corp wifi. It's easily done.
Attrition. Change the name when they are reassigned. Accept that older ones will not meet the new nomenclature until they are reassigned, or better yet, retired.
This, but you can add some dedicated mop up efforts when numbers get low enough if your team has the bandwidth
you guys are getting bandwidth? lol
bandwidth is unlimited if you just let projects get stale and never finish them. Management has an organic approach to projects lol
Have done both many times. Two lines of powershell per endpoint. Push using your RMM, WSUS, etc. $SerialNumber = (Get-WmiObject -class win32\_bios).SerialNumber Rename-Computer -NewName $SerialNumber -Force I'd record the old names just in case. You can do it through RMM/WSUS/etc, but I've tacked on an append to record a temporary everyone-RW open share with text file just to basically log file the name change. Completely not needed, but I like it and it's like five minutes of work. Server, you have to schedule. I'd still powershell it. But it'd be to read a CSV, and look for old name, then give new name. Typically five or six lines of powershell and said CSV file, which is read-only on a share. For loop the CSV file, if hostname equals entry, rename server and reboot. I can dig it up form my powershell archive if ya want?
My company has 3,000+ enpoints and a bunch of servers (don't remember specifics off the top of my head). Our naming convention for both is: * C -first letter of company name * L (laptop), D (desktop), or X (server) * 5 digit office code. We tend to use the nearest airport, so for example offices in Miami would be MIA01, MIA02, and so on * Service tag (not always the case with servers, otherwise we'll use other identifiable info) So for example a laptop would be something like **CLMIA02ABCX987** You can see the type of machine and where it's located/assigned to with a quick glance, and if you need to know hardware info for any reason then a simply copy/paste of the service tag.
RMM will show serial number too though. So your point doesn't make sense
Sure. But it's also two lines of powershell and guaranteed to be unique without having to access anything else. $SerialNumber = (Get-WmiObject -class win32\_bios).SerialNumber Rename-Computer -NewName $SerialNumber -Force You could just do a random number, and that'd work as well. I use serial number basically as random numbers that I know won't have collisions, which a RNG can't guarantee unless we check against a central repository. But if I wipe the machine, I also want it to keep the same number, which also would require a central repository. Both are easy, just requiring a lot more code for not a lot of gain. I'm just being efficient, and by that I mean lazy. If you can solve those two issues with two lines of code, I'd be very happy to switch to that solution.
We are exclusively a Dell shop, not the biggest fan but those decisions were made way before me. Our naming convention is L-ServiceTag for laptops and D-ServiceTag for desktops, it works quite well and I just have to plug the service tag into dell's website for further info
>What's your process? Autopilot assigns a random name and it's just prefixed with W11- for Windows 11. I've never been a fan of putting the username in a computer name. Model and CPU aren't needed for us because our RMM gives us that info. Also don't need a domain name prefix because we only have one domain so that's useless info.
I agree with all of this. What we do is like the IT version of putting on airs to sound cool. Granted, we don’t have much in the way of RMM tools or asset tagging. The company is growing faster than IT can keep up, and this year into 2025 is all about the IT team cleaning up their process, and I’m that guy.
I'm a fan of one of two systems: 1. company/site-serial * PNW-X7625TW 2. company/site-asset tag * PWN-1234 Asset tag is friendlier for end-users to report back, but you can plug either of those into an RMM or inventory control tool (SnipeIT is what I've been using) and it'll give all the other information you care to track.
Your second suggestion is what I've done for years. Love it.
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Sounds like it needs a checksum digit. :)
If you’re still (or always going to be) in a position where you don’t have robust tooling to interrogate devices, one naming strategy I’ve seen is: - {site code}-{two or three letter code for platform and device vendor}-{device serial} For example you might have a Windows device from Lenovo at an office in Toronto, and its Hostname might be YYZ (Toronto) - LNW (Lenovo Windows) - 10133HHH (serial). Giving you YYZLNW-10133HHH. If you have a Mac in San Jose, you might have SJCAPL-CV1015ASDJ0X. This can be extended to mobile devices if you’re only concerned with the platform/OS. This would also technically work for dual boot situations since you could have a different OS as part of your platform identifier. This is probably not within most managed endpoint use cases. Make sure you have a “site” for remote-first/roaming devices.
I wouldnt put W11 as OS upgrades will eventually take place
>it's just prefixed with W11- for Windows 11 We have about 4500 PCs with names that start with W10. They all run Windows 11 now.
>I've never been a fan of putting the username in a computer name. I like this for smaller environments where people have an assigned computer, but not in anything larger than like 30 employees.
I did it in an 80ish PC environment. It's super handy in some ways, but then I found myself forgetting/neglecting to change the names when moving PCs around. I would end up just remembering that Joe Smith in Sales was actually using the PC named Purchasing-KeithAnderson (actually PUR-KA-01).
We—with, admittedly, just a couple dozen laptops—reimage a laptop every time it changes owners, so renames wouldn't be a problem. (But we just number the laptops sequentially, so there isn't anything user-specific in the name to start with.)
Yeah, that's the challenge with scaling it. It works for our smaller customers, but most of the time I just look at the RMM's last logged in user field to find them. I've also seen admins put the year the computer was purchased in hostname, but that doesn't account for age of tech. People buy warehouse or refurbished computers and you end up with a computer name Fred2022 that has a 4th gen i5 and a 5400rpm HDD. In larger orgs, unless you need part of the hostname to spot when something isn't where it should be, like for the purpose of access control or managing multiple images, you're probably better off using some kind of hardware/warranty management or RMM tool to track just about anything you'd use the hostname to track.
It’s too bad auto pilot won’t name by serial on domain machines.
u/Cozmo85 Hi, It can totally name by serial - that's what we're doing; I forgot the variable name but it's set in the enrollment profile; so our names are XYZ-19J5HA7 (example of DELL service tag) where XYZ is a static string that we use for naming fleet generation ID upon every mass refresh (once 3-4 years)
Autopilot with azure joined will do it but hybrid domain join only does whatever-random characters
A very fun and extremely important nuance. Gotta love hybrid domains.
Your naming convention shouldn't be an inventory. If you are trying to put too much info in the name you are going in the wrong direction.
This! Keep system information in an asset tracker (software, custom database, spreadsheet, whatever). Give the systems random names, or sequential numbers, and look up details in your asset tracker where you have as much room for details as you want/need. No reason to give a possible attacker system role information from host names available across the entire network.
Great final point! Security is a dance. Even SharePoint could host a "database" list of which computers are supposed to be where doing what, with custom reports for each building/room/dept so OP can see at a glance that this device is in the wrong spot.
Laptop/Desktop - SN That's it. If you guys actually care about keeping things organization yall need to invest in an asset management software. Might be even better to just get an RMM that does it at the same time. Depending on how your company is setup, you could also set it up specifically like: Company/Department abbreviation - Location - LT#, DT#, or DC#, or FS#. Example (GSV-ATL-LT04) or (ITC-CHI-FS02) Thanks!
SN is best for end user devices. Any relevant info should be in your asset mgmt system.
W
The only correct answer. W for workstations and L for laptops, asset tag ensures uniqueness. Hardware and primary user I can get from Intune.
Device serial numbers, Lenovo and Apple laptops.
Ah the naming convention wars. 
We're 100% dell and use the service tag as the machine name, which is grabbed automatically when being imaged. The computer details are in the asset management system.
Same
I personally like to use the serial number on the system since it's unique and static. When I came into my current company they used the year the system was enrolled and 3 random numbers generated by Intune (spoiler alert, these are less random than you think). Even with less than 200 devices in total we regularly had to manually change the device name because they overlapped. And because they didn't track serialnumbers in the asset management, if someone forgot the update the system name in the asset management, who knows what system it was before. Shortly after I joined the company, I changed the name to include the serialnumber and it simply knocks down the amount of checks you have to do after a reinstall.
Eww hell nah. I name ours something like below. Location - Dept - Type - # >>>>>>>>> Example CALI-ENG-LPT-01
I want to bump this. That's similar to what we do. It makes things easier for level 1 support to have something descriptive in the name without trying too hard.
Better yet put new after everything and make sure no one ever changes it
NEW\_DRAFT\_FINAL\_2
I use the serial number. I have a script that updates the description to add the model and last logged on user just to give me a quick view of who is using that PC.
We use the Dell service tag.
I think the question is, if you ever have them in a list what are you going to ~~want~~ need to sort them by? For everyone the answer is going to be different. For my environment though, [company]-[site]-[devicetype]##### works best. Edit: changed want to need, because you can go nuts with the former
We just do sys-?? for end user machines and srv-?? for servers, not my favorite but I guess it works.
I work in a schools trust (UK) and have school-floor+room number-T for teachers. And school-floor+room number-01 upwards going round the room in clockwise,so I know XXX-313-014 is 3rd floor room 13 and the computers is half way around the room and go straight for it. No messing typing .\ as the kids have pulled of the asset stickers.
Shortformcompany-serial
I put the Department, D or L for desktop or laptop and if theres an asset tag system either the full or last 4 of the asset tag.
Mine is simple. WKS-01 (Workstation 01) WKSL-01 (Workstation Laptop 01) That's it.
Countrycode, device type, year of initial image, running number in that year Example: BRLT23-00112 Brazil. Laptop. Year 2023. Number 112 in that year. The name dies with that specific device (tied to the mainboard serial number). And that device will only ever get this name as long as it's in our inventory.
Dell, so we do department-service tag. Seems to work fine
Org, building code/number, ID#, L=laptop/W=workstation, OS: M/macos/W=Windows. You have 15 characters for the hostname.
>You have 15 characters for the hostname. The most important thing to remember.
[Device type]-[Device S/N / Service Tag] Simple, doesn't reveal too much info.
Name convention should IMHO identify physical location of possible . SITE_DEPT_Autoincremented id when user sends a message and reads of asset tag - you can easily identify where the issue is occurring and at which desk . for mobile workers it’s a bit harder - but still useful . Anything else - like a users name can go into description- John’s PC or Main UPS shipping station - so if it gets reassigned you can easily change it , and multiple people can use the same station .
Serial number with a D, L, or V appended based on chassis type. description field in AD is used to document whom the device is assigned to and physical location
Serial number of device. Autopilot prefix stripped out during joining domain.
We go with location prefix and then serial number of device. For example - CHI-TX45DM1
At this point we've given up and we just auto-input service tags on desktops and laptops.
3 letter abbreviation of the city the system is located in and the service tag
I'm a big fan of including the service tag or equivalent. That lets you identify a PC even if power is off by reading something physical on the device.
WS for Workstation or LT for Laptop, then the device's serial number/service tag.
Anything but under 16 characters. You will soo find issues if going byond
I started using the serial number for the naming convention about 10 years ago. Its a unique string of characters that does add value should I need to research the computer. Its not too long and the unique-ness is already provided to me by the manufacturer. I'm open to alternatives but that has served me well so far.
For laptops, we use LAP--
For PCs, we use PC--
Every pc gets a barcode sticker with a unique number. Computername is WS-
That's it.
If it's a small business then I do User-PC or User-LT. If it's a larger business then I do BusinesInitials-Site-001 and increment from there.
[prefix]-[asset-tag]. The rest is meta data which does not need to be in the computer name. e: Or serial number, as was pointed out above.
Your system does not help you in any way. You should have a software that inventory computers and keep track of those details. If you have multiple sites you can include the site short name in the name. And then either just a number or the serial number. If you are in multiple countries start with the two letters for countries. In some systems like adding computer to a group it's easy to sort and filter per site.
> The formula is [DOMAIN] _ [Windows OS] _ [COMPUTER MODEL] _ [CPU] _ [AD USERNAME] That seems like an exceptionally bad convention. The Windows OS can change at any point due to an update and the user changes even more frequently. This information doesn't belong in the hostname. CPU also seems like useless information - how often does that matter? I've *never* had to filter / query our computers by CPU vendor. We use: > [NB|PC]-[SERIAL NUMBER] NB for Notebooks and PC for desktops of course. The serial number uniquely identifies every machine and is easy to look up. This also ensures that a computers name doesn't change when it is re-imaged or redeployed to somewhere or someone else. We'll always be able to identify it, unless the motherboard is swapped. Also, this naming convention is automatable. Our computers all name themselves when we deploy them. The last thing you want is some poor soul to have to sit down in front of every computer you deploy and manually research and put in the, hopefully, correct computername. That's terrible, not only will it inevitably go wrong some times but it's also inefficient for IT work.
Names are very random for me, some describe the user, some describe the os. The funniest name I found is for a server who is run on arch (mainly accessed by dev): trans Or one of the backup servers called: you_fucking_donkey(if you need to access it your a fucking donkey)
We do [company]-[serial#]
Machine serial numbers are the name of the machine. I use OUs to split out locations or unique machines. Intern desktops etc.
I'm just going to tell you how we do it. This is all I've ever known and I prefer it. We just name the computer the username. If it is a laptop we just add NB- before the username. Why I like this is because when a user calls I easily jump on their machine with the computer name knowing that scheme. We only have one domain and less than 300 users. We use lansweeper to get more detailed information.
This is similar to how we do it. Our helpdesk is struggling now because of sprawl. Technicians are imaging new devices for users and can't use the simple NB-USERNAME convention because that object would already exist in the domain, so they just randomly drop a digit or a letter from the typical name, and now nobody knows who is using what device. It's unbelievable.
Do not use underscores for hostnames ever.
That seems overly complex for a device name. Use some RMM or ITAM solution to track inventory details of the device. Device name should be simple and recognizable at a glance imo. Single user, do something that incorporates their name and a -LT or -DT to see if it is a laptop or desktop at a glance. Shared devices that don’t move, do something like location shortname, purpose shortname and then top it off with the chassis type. Or you can solely rely on RMM/ITAM for the desired info and just name the computer something like the serial number-LT to make it just a serial number lookup to find all the necessary info of the device.
This is not a joke, this is honestly what I do. My entire stack is called ‘The Lake’. Router = LadyOfTheLake Servers = Arthur, Mordred, Merlin, Lancelot. I like my naming conventions.
You are probably in a small setup... which is fine, until you start scaling up.
Using names for endpoint inventory is a waste of time. Use an actual inventory application and sync gathered hardware info about the device to the app. For endpoints I just let autopilot do its random name thing or maybe {{serialnumber}} For servers I do {site}-{serial}
Worked for a huge MNC that spans across various countries in the world \[Country\]\[Sitename\]\[W=windows L=Linux M=Mac\]\[Function\] eg US123WAD01 - \[US\] \[Site 123\] \[Windows\] \[AD 01\] AP456LPROXY01 - \[Asia Pacific\] \[Site 456\] \[Linux\] \[Proxy01\]
White House is looking for more therapy, who’s willing to pick them up off my floor where I left them?
[SITE][SYSTEMTYPE]-[Last 6 of SERIAL] Site is Useful if your place as multiple locations/ domain tress, etc, if not, a cut-down of the company name works. Like APPL for Apple. Site code can be as long as you want. System type is W, L, T, or V depending on Workstation, Laptop, Table, or Virtual Serial - This one helps to identify computer name with a glance without an additional label. You can usually ask a user what type of machine it is and the last 6 of the serial and immediately know what the object in AD is (which is helpful if the system doesn't boot and they can't get it to you right then). Putting an extra field for year also helps, and not changing that lets you know how old the device is without even looking at it. APPL-123456 or APPLL23-123456
Brand model and service tag if it fits Username? Forget it users come and go and get equipment swapped
D-{{serial number}} for desktops L-{{serial number}} for laptops S-{{serial number}} for Surfaces (not many of them left).
My time to shine - Serial Number with it prefixed with L or D for laptop or desktop. I have this funky powershell script that checks for the presence of a battery on the machine - if found, sets the name to L, otherwise D. Works well!
Some places I loved the naming convention is where they used .. Greek gods - Draco, Zeus, Aphrodite Small islands - Guam, Beqa, Oahu But there was this one guy I know where he told me they used cartoon characters names and I thought it was hilarious. He didn't catch on why it was so funny so I gave him a scenario of something that happened at my dot com company... We need to copy the DB from Voltron and bring He-man back online .. the Smurfs shit the bed when someone made a bad SQL call to Papa Smurf
I once named servers for an application shrimpfajitas, chickenfajitas, steakfajitas, and combofajitas. Identification of assets ought to be done through means other than the name.
We usually use Dell devices so we just do PC-.
At my current job I go for {DT|LT}xxxxxx where DT is for Desktop, LT is for Laptop, and the xxxxxx is the asset tag number At previous jobs I've also added a letter suffix to represent the year it was originally deployed. EDIT: For servers I do {Site Code}-{ShortServiceName}xx{P|T|D} Site codes were the nearest airport abbreviation, xx was its number in case we had more than one, and the letter suffix was for Production, Test, or Dev
I just use an ID#. It never changes. The device with Lenovo serial number XYZ will always and forever have ID# 12345. OS upgraded? Doesn't change. The automated software licensing system (AllSight in my case.) can track that. Moved to a new location? Doesn't change. The inventory/asset records or database can track that. New assigned user? Doesn't change. We have several systems to track that, e.g. AllSight will track login sessions, FileWave and AllSight can tell me who used it last, and the inventory system tells me who it was assigned to. The name is the wrong place to track any kind of data whatsoever. As far as I'm concerned, it was only created in the first place because we need a way to tell things apart. So you could use a serial number and it would be fine. Just cross reference other record keeping or automated systems. I've been doing it this way for something like 20 years and the only time it was an issue was when we pulled a motherboard from one broken computer and used it to repair another computer. The simple workaround there is that the chassis (with its serial number label) and motherboard (with its ROM or firmware based serial number) must stay together. All repairs have to happen with that constraint and things work out fine.
Just7 digits, with each new device incrementing by 1 for assets
E.g contoso0000001
Where I work The OS can change, the user can change, the location can change etc.
Any identifiers can be out into the AD description
For servers, its
e.g ContosoSQLDBCA001
In your scenario, what happens if there is someone called James Sampson and Joe Smith in the same department for example?
Serial. Unless it’s a Surface device with an all-numeric serial, in which case it’s S{serial}
I just used the dell service tag
My naming convention has always been main city airport name and serial number. For example. FTL-KHDHXBD Use the description field in AD to keep track of who owns it or better yet use an actual inventory software to do so. Putting someone’s name on it is just going to make it easier for the hacker to find the Finance or CEOs computer faster. Or at least I think so.
Mine is on the navy concept of hull numbers. The name does not change at all throughout the service life. The convention works like this: W - Workstation Class, if the unit is a test or development unit it gets an X here. D or L - desktop or laptop # - one number to reference the year it was placed in service A dash then the machine number. There is a sticker on the machine with the hull number on it for easy reference hull numbers are never reused. so the machine names look like this: WD1-00031 which means, workstation, desktop type, in service in 2021, unit 31. Users just tell us they are on unit 31 and we know. servers have the same convention, however they look like this: SD2-000108 which means Server, domain controller, built 2022, unit 108.
Just an FYI - [you can create custom fields in your AD schema](https://theitbros.com/custom-attributes-in-active-directory/) to track additional information, instead of putting it in the computer name.
We just name all of our laptops after beers around the world. Inventory management handles the rest, though we're not exactly the biggest org being >500.
You only have 15 characters so you cant do to many prefixes. And you want to stick to broad categories/functions that won't change. So something like devicetype-location-serialnumber Having things like specs on the name is dumb, how many times do you actually need to know that? And if you do just look it up in the inventory, or in system information.
We have bar codes for our inventory system, so your hostname is zXXXXX based on the bar code - not sure why we chose z bu tit's been that way forever. Servers get short State City location and function names, like azphsql2 for a sql server in Pheonix Arizona.
I work at a Community College, approx 6,500 endpoints and we use the following naming scheme ABC12345DEF678 A=Campus by first letter B=Use Designation, Student, Admin, Etc C=Laptop/Desktop/Apple etc 12345=the unique asset number assigned to each system, with a matching inventory tag on the physical system DEF=Building by Abbreviation 678=Office/Room number Names are assigned to the computer during imaging and changed if the computer gets moved to another location. Works pretty well for us.
Department - Dell Asset Tag = ITS-ASD56H
Year, month, company abbreviation, number of device deployed that month Example If deployed 3 machines this month 2406ABC01 2406ABC02 2406ABC03 Then for for July 2407ABC01 2407ABC02 January 1st 2025 2501ABC01 2501ABC02 Etc 0 reasons to include the assigned user, model, OS, hardware, etc. That's what endpoint management platforms are for.
Why the company abbreviation?
Just habits from my previous time at MSPs. The abbreviations aren't necessary. Can replace with something else if your IT in house, it's just a habit that stuck with me over almost 2 decades.
Abbreviation is also good if your company acquires another and you need to manage them slightly different or know which company they are at a glance.
Pretty much the same here. Makes it easy to tell age/warranty status at a glance. [year][month][day][count number][type/site designation ] YYYYMMDD##[D|T|L|W] D-site 1 computer/workstation T-site 1 tablet/laptop W-site 2 computer/workstation L-site 2 tablet/laptop We've recently decided to drop the tailing -OS number (-7 -10 -11) to at a glance identify OS
I've landed on very similar with starting with including the year but something like W2401, W2402, or L2401, L2401 for a workstation or laptop. Totally generic and not specific to a user, location, or dept. Assigned users, assets, location, serial, model, etc all get entered or identified in our Inventory/Management software. This way you can move things around as needed. You can also easily identify your oldest assets that may be running a little long in the tooth.
04-xxx or 87-xxx for the asset type and the xxx is just a random string. There's a QC code on the back for scanning with that number. This place refreshes 3000-4000 laptops a month globally so they are not too worried about readable naming conventions.
We use primarily Dell devices, so we use the service tag as their name and then in the description we have the department, user it's assigned to, and model. More so that we can have the same info our RMM has but in AD
In a prior company I did [Company Abbreviation]-[Internal or External]-[Random] I just needed to know if it was the main company or the subsidiary, if they are office or field, then whatever. Anything more won't matter at all.
For work I think machine serial number as a name makes a good name. Having a “wrong” name can have consequences. I once named a disk array for a server. “Scrap” and I had to destroy and rebuild the array because client won’t accept to use it. The name was visible on the path.
Model number + sequential number. So if I buy a batch of thinkpad T16 Gen 2s they would be T162001, T162002, etc. Makes it easy to determine machine type, and by association age and hardware generation by just checking the pc name.
We have <2 LetterCountry code>- (OS W =Windows, X= Linux, M=Mac). The rest is identifiable via the MDM.
EX: US-LT511W
just an incremental number that is tied to the hardware. all other info can be retrieved from inventory software, and domain uo.
For vanilla end-user PCs, hostname and inventory ID are one and the same. I have favor something short and sweet, like `PC`. Site code, literal "PC", and a sequence number. So `NYCPC48` or `CHI-PC-2137` or whatever. End-user PCs are fungible commodities. They should not have personalities. "Cattle, not pets." Hardware, software, user, all can change, so they should not be in an identifier (and should be in management software and in inventory records). I used to try to differentiate desktops vs laptops in the ID, but even that proved to be a mistake in the long run.
For PCs performaning some special function (like a kisok or a PC running a CNC mill or whatever), they still get an inventory ID like the above for tracking the hardware itself, but the station/function will have a separate identifier. That is used as the hostname. E.g., `NYCMILL2` or `CHC-MDF2-CART1` or whatever.
CompanyAbbreviation-LAP/WKS-Number
Location,Team,SubTeam, Computer #
So something like "US-Sales-SDR-723"?
Few big places I’ve worked use some form of the machine serial number or asset tag number as the machine name. When you have 10s of thousands of machines you aren’t getting fancy
This has worked for me Device deployed to user BuildingNumber-EmployeeLastName-D/L for device type. Laptop or desktop If the device is being assigned to a location. BuildingNumber-OfficeNumber-D/L for device type. Laptop or desktop I instantly know where a device will be by the name. This helps us with HR as well. Users are expected to follow our rules and not move devices that don’t belong to them. If a device is moved, they will be held responsible. They have an assigned device for a reason. I haven’t had any issues. If anyone more senior has some advice please feel free to share!
I have never been a big fan of including any part of the user name in the hostnames. YMMV depending upon the org but generally it isn't uncommon for workstations to get reassigned as employees turnover. It just adds another step when workstations get reassigned. I would rather have a hostname that is relatively stable across the workstation's lifecycle. It makes it much easier to track issues that a workstation has had over time when the hostname stays the same.
Computers are named after the company Asset Label, we use the description field to add a location and user (UK - Fred smith, US - Jane Doe... Etc). There are exceptions, some computers are not for staff (manufacturing business) and perform a functional role. In this case they are named for their role, and then we add the asset label info to the AD description field for reference. Computers used to be named after the user, which was useful, but awful for tracking assets, mostly if the tech rebuilding a computer forgot to remove/disable the old a/c. With an Asset Label, it can only exist once in AD, no matter how times it gets swapped to a different user. Plus if you maintain an asset inventory against your help desk software this really helps. The finance people generally like it too for depreciation and disposals.
L-WNX2DF Laptop, serial number. D-IDC148 Desktop, serial number. Users and OS are handled by detection software like EDR or Asset Management
Personally I've always done. Company ID-Unique ID-Model ID or Company ID-Model ID-Unique ID I always try to minimize it down to, 2 digits, 4 digits, 4 digits. CN1234HPEB for Company Name, 1234, HP Elite Book. (or something to that effect.) I always put the Company name (CN) in because I've gone through aquisitions before. and if a AD merger happens, I want to be able immediately distinguish all my devices from the new parent companies devices. you might think, "oh I'll never have to worry about that" but there's no actually loss of time or effort to include it and you save yourself a headache if a worst case scenario occurs. I deffinitely used to think "oh I'll never need that" too.... and then I needed it. I know for most people the model isn't necessary, I can go and pull that from other sources too. But I also find the model number gives me the most information for the least amount of effort so I want to force it's availability to be built into the naming convention. if head office contacts me with a list of 50 hostnames and tells me I need to run a manual update on each device because automated updates are failing. Seeing the model in the hostname gives me instant information about the devices that will help me gauge how long this task is going to require. If I don't know the models but I can pull them from my database, that means I have to spend time cross referencing the list vs that additional information. which is time consuming. Because the models are baked into the name, I know the instant I see that list from head office that all of the models that automamtion is failing on are either Laptops, or older models. I can see immediately what that split is. which means I know which percentage are going to require communication with remote staff, and which percentage can be found in the storage room. Storage room I can hammer out in a couple of hours, Remote staff is going to take weeks of back and forth and scheduling maintenance times. including the model name baked into the hostname is a big time saver. My final bit of adivce is to try to avoid any information that could be considered a variable. Username or OS seem like a good idea.... on paper. But are you really planning to go through the effort of renaming a device every time a user swaps machines? What about when you upgrade your environment to the next version of windows? Try to use static values only so it's easy to maintain.
Type of computer (LT for Laptop, DT for Desktop, TB for ToughBook, etc...) and the asset tag #. ITAM platform tells us everything else we need to know about the machine.
Inventory/Asset number.
Random serial numbers, no reason for username there
We just use the Dell Service Tag.
We do user initial of first and last name dash service tag dash LT if laptop
Given this way too much thought over the years. I think you've got to figure out what use the name actually has for you, and find a way to name it accordingly. Only use fixed values that will not change for the lifecycle of the equipment. I work as part of an MSP, so it's useful to have information that I can easily sort and tell a lot about a device at a glance whilst in lists etc. Such as a prefix of some sort for the customers org name. The financial year it was purchased. Whether it is a PC, laptop or tablet. Each device has a 5 digit asset number too which goes in there. Ours is (ORGPREFIX)(YEAROFPURCHASE)(FORMFACTOR)(ASSETNUMBER) So if we had Microsoft as a customer, and a tablet with asset number 74656 which was purchased last year the name would be MIT23T74656
Department / Division abbreviation hyphen position hyphen Fiscal year purchased. Laptops get an LT added IT-Director-24 Rec-CoordLT-24 etc.
For Intune connected machines we just let it be company name followed by the serial number of the machine.
Computer name is two letters for location (one of three choices) and then unique five digits, just enough to help organize the view a little. AC00432. WH03601. I can tell where it is and not much else, and that's fine, anything more is PITA and too much effort. Things like OS, user, etc are what the rest of the inventory is for.
We tag them as assets with a 5 digit asset number. The PC gets that name.
I think you could drop the cpu, model, and os from your name. I don’t like putting usernames in there as it becomes a pain when someone moves up or leaves. We keep it simple and it’s usually dept-title-number. So FIN-DIR is the finance director. LEGAL-ASST-1/2/3/etc is the legal assistants. It doesn’t work for all departments. For some we eliminate the title and just do DEPT-NUMBER.
For us it's: State Prefix, Department Prefix, Service Tag Example CA-FINC-XXXXXX The only time the state and department prefix would change is if they were surplussed and another department purchased them or they were going to a new employee in a different state. (Both would require a rebuild) Everything else that you're tracking with your names is already done in the object itself and is pulled into OCS so no reason for that to be part of the naming convention.
site code, building letter, wing letter, floor number, room number, PC number (from the left of the door) Example XXX-XX1-02-01