Name your machines whatever you want and use CNAMEs to address them. It really shouldn't (and generally doesn't) matter what scheme you use. Naming schemes like

Name your machines whatever you want and use CNAMEs to address them. It really shouldn't (and generally doesn't) matter what scheme you use. Naming schemes like this are mostly about personal aesthetics. If you think it looks 1337 to encode a lot of information in the hostname you can do that. You can also choose funny names. When you're small it's easy to manage anything and when you grow any unique key to look up in a server database will do.