This is a quick PSA on naming conventions for servers. I’m going to give you a quick “don’t ever do it like this” example to start.
We have a bunch of machines that somebody named similar to the following:
- WEBV-1
- WEBV-2
- APPV-1
- APPV-2
- APP-V1
- APP-V2
- APP-V3
- WEB-V1
- WEB-V2
Not only are these names all very similar, you wouldn’t know that these servers comprise development (DEV), stage (STG) and production (PRD) environments. They aren’t marked as such. Here are the machines listed by environment:
DEV
- WEBV-1
- APPV-1
STG
- WEBV-2
- APPV-2
PRD
- WEB-V1
- WEB-V2
- APP-V1
- APP-V2
- APP-V3
Huh?
Maybe it doesn’t seem like a big deal. In practice though it is. I made mistakes just typing this out and had to keep double-checking things. Imagine trying to communicate with other team members or your manager using these names. It’s a complete mess and it’s completely unnecessary.
There are several different approaches to naming. It’s another thing some geeks like to argue about. I don’t really care so much about an absolute right or wrong naming. I do care about names that at the very least allow you to distinguish servers from each other.
We are rebuilding all of the machines and settled on something similar to the following:
DEV
- DEVWEB-1
- DEVAPP-1
STG
- STGWEB-1
- STGAPP-1
PRD
- PRDWEB-1
- PRDWEB-2
- PRDAPP-1
- PRDAPP-2
- PRDAPP-3
It’s a very basic approach but you can see right away how much better it is.