Hi guys, first time posting in the SCCM. Looking for some advice from the experts on choosing a name standard for computer names. I have seen people use serialnumber, macadress, companyname etc.. but I'm not really sure what to use. I have a customer that is using a very weird name standard on their computers right now. We are going to roll out W7 soon and have the opportunity to change the name standard also. So I wanted to hear what everybody else is using? Maybe someone has an "Ultimate" name standard that suits all scenario? The only requirment is that it should be automated so we can use Zero touch to do installs and reinstalls. Please also state (if you can) why you have chosen that name standard and the pros and cons with it.

I use a three letter prefix then the service tag. Very easy to automate. John Marcum | http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jmarcum/|

Hi John Does service tag equals serialnumber or is it something else? I mean do you set OSDComputername=XXX-%serialnumber% ?

like John says, a few letters in the beginning to signify a country, the rest being the serial number (or for example, Dell Service Tag ie for Sweden use SE1234567), but use what works for your organisation, eg: is it Global ? if not, then country location is not important, here's some ways of doing it My step by step SCCM Guides I'm on Twitter > ncbrady

Hi Niall The organisation isn't global and they only have one location, so country code or location prefix has no meaning. What do you guys think of OSDComputername=L-%serialnumber% and D-%serialnumber% to distinguish between Laptop and Desktops? I have used it before on some other places but always wondered if their were any better alternatives.

that would be easy to implement as you can use a WMI query on the set computername step to query for laptop/desktop eg: IsDestkop = True or IsLaptop = True My step by step SCCM Guides I'm on Twitter > ncbrady

i'm using [Country:US][Location:San Jose][Machine Type:Notebook][Running number:12345678] sum up to 15 characters max (it has some usage in WINS for PXE boot) e.g USSJONB00000008 and so on..---Packie

Packie, can you do zero touch with that? How does it handle the running number automaticly?

we have enterprise tools to create the object in Active Directory for user ID/hostname you can also create a powershell script for this purpose---Packie

i'm using [Country:US][Location:San Jose][Machine Type:Notebook][Running number:12345678] sum up to 15 characters max (it has some usage in WINS for PXE boot) e.g USSJONB00000008 and so on..---Packie

Could you show us a template of that powershell script ? I'm trying to figure out the same, I've looked at other ways of doing it with a front end. But because I'd like to keep web services as few as possible I try not to use it ( http://blogs.technet.com/b/mniehaus/archive/2009/12/06/ris-style-naming-with-mdt-2010-use-a-web-service.aspx ) I'm trying to have the naming "siteprefix+laptop/workstation+running number" the to first are easy but creating a vb script for checking ad if exists is a bit worse.

we have enterprise tools to create the object in Active Directory for user ID/hostname you can also create a powershell script for this purpose---Packie