UNM Host Naming Convention (Servers)
Naming Conventions
This document defines a standard naming convention for servers. The naming convention combines a fixed-length series of designators to arrive at a name. The formulaic names are intended to be represented as Address records (A Records) to be posted in the internal view of UNM’s split-view DNS system. Under certain circumstances, these A Records may be published to the external view where necessary/appropriate. Where appropriate, Canonical Name records (CNAMEs) can be used for ‘vanity’ names and may be published to either the internal view, external view, or both.
The simplest overall format of the convention designators is as follows:
SSSS + O + AAAA + FFF + E + NN for SSSSOAAAAFFFENN
Where:
SSSS = Service Administrator Designator
O = Operating System Designator
AAAA = Application Designator
FFF = Function/ Service Designator
E = Environment Designator
NN = Numeric Designator
Example:
ENT + W + SEP + MGT + P + 01 for ENTWSEPMGTP01
The resulting hostname should be 15-character (maximum) text string that is well supported as a hostname or alias by all current TCP/IP and DNS standards.
Notes:
This standard implies that all existing objects shall be renamed as a matter of course. All legacy, non-compliant names shall be modified to reflect the naming convention standard. All new or "green field" builds shall comply with the following naming standard.
This standard is comprehensively prescriptive. The designators identified within are prescriptive for the uses defined, but it is to be assumed that more designators will need to be defined as part of the normal course of business at UNM. In that event, the naming convention framework defined here shall be followed to define new designators.
Service Administrator Designator
A two (2) 2 to four (4) character designator shall be used to allow immediate identification of the service administrator of a host.
Where:
- SSSS = Service Administrator Designator
Examples:
- CARC = Center for Advanced Research Computing
- ISPO = Information Security & Privacy Office
- IT = Information Technologies
- UL = University Libraries
Notes:
- The Service Administrator Designator shall be taken from the UNM Enterprise Active Directory (AD) Organizational Unit (OU) names, where there are four (4) characters or less.
- Where AD OU names are longer than four characters, an abbreviated OU name shall be used. (Ex. ‘Enterprise’ would be shortened to ‘ENT’.
- Initialisms and acronyms shall be capitalized. (Ex. CARC, ISPO, IT, UL etc.).
- Services names and descriptions shall not contain underscores or CamelCase.
Operating System (OS) Designator
A one (1) character designator shall be used to identify the host’s operating system.
O | Operating System |
A | Appliance – Hardware or Virtual Appliance |
L | GNU/Linux – Debian, RHEL, SUSE, etc. |
U | UNIX – AIX, BSD, HP-UX, etc. |
W | Microsoft Windows Server – All |
Application Designator
A 3 to 4-character designator shall be used to allow identification of the UNM application hosted by the host, including both physical and virtual environment. The following are examples:
AAAA | Application |
ADCS | Active Directory Certificate Services |
ADDS | Active Directory Domain Services (Controllers) |
AFT | Academic Forecasting Tool |
APWX | AppWorx |
ASTR | Ad Astra |
ATRC | AdvisorTrac |
BAR | Banner and ERP Authorizations |
CAS | Central Authentication Service |
CASC | Cascade |
CCAC | C-Cure Access Control |
CPNL | cPanel |
CSM | Cherwell Service Management |
DARS | Degree Audit Reporting System |
DC | Domain Controllers |
EKIT | Evaluation Kit |
EMR | Enterprise Metrics Reporting |
FMS | FAMIS Facility Management Solutions |
HBSN | Hobsons Graduate Application |
IBLX | Infoblox |
JSS | JAMF Software Server |
KRNS | Kronos (Lobo Time) |
LDAP | LDAP / Kerberos Authentication Server |
LIST | LISTSERV |
MIME | MineMeld |
NSSS | Nessus |
OPIN | Opinio |
PAWP | PawPrints |
PINN | Pinnacle |
SCCM | System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) |
SEP | Symantec Endpoint Protection |
SMTP | SMTP Mail Relay |
SPLK | Splunk Enterprise |
STRF | Starfish (Lobo Achieve) |
TUTR | TutorTrac |
UACH | uAchieve (Lobo Trax) |
UDIR | uDirect |
WSUS | Windows Server Update Services |
XTEN | xTender Document Management |
TSM | Tivoli Storage Manager Server |
Function Designator
A 3 to 4-character designator shall be used to identify the function, role, or purpose of the device. Standard identifiers should be used first, then Generic identifiers.
| FFF | Function |
Generic | APP | Application Server |
BAT | Batch/ Bulk Processing Server | |
DB | Database Server | |
MDW | Middleware Server | |
MGT | Management Server | |
WEB | Web Server | |
EFS | File Server (also DFS or other Enterprise File System) | |
VMM | Hypervisor (ESXi or Hyper-V Virtualization Platforms) | |
PRX | RDP / SSH Session Proxy Server or Appliance | |
Standard Web | ACH | Apache (No PHP Module) Web Server |
APH | Apache+PHP Web Server | |
IIS | Microsoft Internet Information Services Server | |
TOM | Tomcat Application Server | |
WBL | WebLogic Application Server | |
Standard | ODB | Oracle Database Server (Standalone or RAC Node) |
PDB | PostgreSQL Database Server | |
RAC | Oracle Database Cluster (RAC) Entities | |
MDB | Microsoft SQL Database Server or Cluster Entities | |
SQL | MySQL Database Server |
Environment Designator
A 1-character designator shall be used to identify the deployment environment.
E | Environment / Tier |
D | Development |
I | Integration |
P | Production |
Numeric Designator
A 2-character designator shall be used to enumerate a collection of hosts. The following are EXAMPLES:
NN | Sequence Number |
01 | First host in sequence |
99 | Ninety-ninth in sequence |
