The server naming convention is dead, long live the server naming convention!

Summary:

1. Get rid of conventions that can be cross-referenced from other data sources in a programmatic fashion.  
2. Consolidate or present those cross-referenced data points into one pane of glass.

Rant:

In times old, server's had cool names like Ferrari, Robotech, etc.  Although cool, this drove the need for a server naming convention which served useful purpose.  It could tell us a good many things about a server just by looking @ its name.  Some things could be:

1. Location
2. OS
3. Application
4. Etc.

Because of limitations in previous technologies, you had to limit your server name to a certain number of characters (coming from a Windows background).  Each of these data points needed to be shortened to acronyms or numbers.  This essentially requires a decoder ring for each section of the server name to understand it's hidden meaning.  When dealing w/ a small environment, not a big deal, but scalability becomes a problem.

Using the examples given above:

1. Location Sources
• IP Space
• Active Directory Sites and Services
• Virtualization Management systems like vCenter or SCvMM
• Local iLOM/IDrac/OOB
2. OS Sources
• Active Directory
• WSMan
• Bash
• Virtualization Management systems like vCenter or SCvMM
3. Application - a bit more complex, but use sources.
• WSMan
• Other tools to extrapolate the installed applications and convert those to 'tags'

Bottom line:

Any modern naming convention should not contain any crypted metadata that can be programmatically cross-referenced from a trusted source.