VM naming Convention Best Practices...

[MrVmware9423]

Dear team,

i just need your asissatnce on VM naming convention. Can you please help me with the best practices of the same.

regards

Mr VMware

[Josh26]

I don't believe there's a documented best practise - but I also don't believe there's any reason for a virtual machine to adopt a different naming strategy from a physical machine.

I would certainly say - don't do this:

[dcname][rackname][servername][role][number]

As soon as you vmotion it to another server, the name is wrong. Renaming servers because you use vmotion is a terrible idea.

www.lolware.net.

[a_p_]

How do you currently name your system? Personally I don't really care whether a system is running physically or virtually and choose the name based on the systems role (e.g. DC001, DC002, FS001, SQL01, ...) This also prevents from the need to make exceptions in case you e.g. convert a physical system to a virtual machine, as renaming a system in such a case is not really desirable in most cases.

André

[jklick]

I've seen a wide range of ways that people name virtual servers and for a wide range of reasons. I think Josh has the right idea by first indicating what you should not do, which is using any sort of naming convention that would be a variable, especially in dynamic virtual environments. Other than that, many people use the same conventions they used for physical servers.

If you happen to be starting from scratch or you're doing P2V and looking for a naming change, here's some additional thoughts:

• Many will use a prefix/abbreviation in the name to describe what the server does. This can make things easier when navigating around the virtual environment. The post previous to mine gives some examples of this. Some classic ones I see all the time:
  • AD## = Active Directory
  • EXCH## = Exchange
  • DB## = Database
  • SQL## = SQL Server
  • ORA## = Oracle Server
  • WEB## = Web Server
  • DC## = Domain Controller
  • BES## = Blackberry Enterprise Server
  • You get the idea...
• I've seen some organizations that are concerned about privacy/security when it comes to naming servers, so they make things fairly anonymous (i.e. VM214, last names of famous actors, etc.). If you fall into this latter category, you could still use folder and/or resource pools to organize virtual servers. Probably the best way to accomplish this would be using the new tag/category function in vSphere 5.1.
• Keep in mind that if in the future you rename a virtual machine inside vCenter, that it doesn't change the name of the VM's folder and file names on the datastore - that needs to be done manually. If all names are not changed, this can create difficulty when trying to pinpoint files on your expensive storage are in use and which ones are orphaned.

TL;DR Version

Best practice: If you're not naming your servers after Lord of the Rings characters, you're doing it wrong.

[MrVmware9423]

Dear All,

first of all many thanks for ur precious suggestions.....

i just want to ask can i use space  , special characters (-,_), when setting a display name of a VM.

regards

Mr VMware

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Yes, you can certainly use spaces, "-" and "_". What you should not use are language specific special characters.

André

[angla]

In our environment, we use <team_name>_<DNS Name>. This is because we have quite a number of IT teams administering different VMs. By doing so, we are able to easily configure VM alerts to the different IT teams through centalized mailbox and mailrules.