One of my biggest pet peeves is when people name a host after a product, say 'mysql-prod-101', then later they decide to switch from MySQL to Oracle. I worked i

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people name a host after a product, say 'mysql-prod-101', then later they decide to switch from MySQL to Oracle. I worked in an environment where a number of hosts contained 'tomcat' in the name but they were all running weblogic. Better to name based on the role, as you say, so the mysql-prod-101 would be better named db-prod-101. However, I've come to think that nowadays with configuration managment it's not really necessary to give hostnames at all. People usually don't like that suggestion when I bring it up, but if you are using something like puppet's 'facter' to run actions only on hosts that match certain 'facts', what do you really need hostnames for? Edit: I just reread your paragraph about using positional hostnames. This seems like a good use, because the main problem I see with role based hostnames is that hosts can take on multiple roles. But in general the hostname seems unimportant if you are tagging your hosts with roles.