At home I use star names (from the sky): * deneb * vega * betelgeuse * nashira * procyon At work, for simple networks, I use the name of the functio

At home I use star names (from the sky): * deneb * vega * betelgeuse * nashira * procyon At work, for simple networks, I use the name of the function the server implements: * mail * fw (firewall) * fs (file server) * intranet * backup * virt (eg. ESXi vCenter) I don't understand people who insist on appending a 001 postfix to every server name. Firstly, you will most likely never have hundreds of servers fulfilling the same function. Secondly, if you do you will 3 digits may not even be sufficient. So just start with mail, mail2, ... mail10, ... You have files named after servers and "ls" don't show them in numerical order? Use "ls -v". Your management tool don't sort them? Big deal. It's much more painful to have to type "001" the hundreds/thousands of time you will need to ping a server or ssh into it.