Whenever the list of systems gets too large I find I need to come up with a very boring scheme like that. At the university where I worked I set them up as: -

Whenever the list of systems gets too large I find I need to come up with a very boring scheme like that. At the university where I worked I set them up as: - 6-letter department abbreviation - 3-letter group abbreviation - 1-letter role/type identifier (e.g. w for workstation, s for server, m for mobile) - 3-number sequence number, with the highest order digit often grouping related systems together. It worked out pretty well and it made the systems easy to figure out from the hostname alone. I like the idea of geographical names, but I would get a little annoyed when I moved a system from one building to another.