{"id":6569,"date":"2016-09-13T14:48:21","date_gmt":"2016-09-13T13:48:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/?p=6569"},"modified":"2016-09-13T15:54:31","modified_gmt":"2016-09-13T14:54:31","slug":"thoughts-naming-azure-resources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2016\/09\/thoughts-naming-azure-resources.htm","title":{"rendered":"Some thoughts on naming Azure resources"},"content":{"rendered":"

During a recent project, I was caught out by a lack of consistency in naming for Azure resources (and an inability to rename some of them afterwards). Some resources had underscores in their names (_), some had hyphens (-) –\u00a0and then there were the inconsistencies in case. For someone who generally pays attention to details like this, I found it all very frustrating.<\/p>\n

So I started to look into what a standard for naming Azure resources might look like (I also asked Microsoft for advice). The general advice I received was, “stick to numbers and letters – no special characters because some resources won’t accept them”. Then, whilst naming a subnet and starting with a\u00a0number I found that subnet names can’t start with a number or a space.<\/p>\n

So, lets make that “use letters and numbers only, in lower case, and always starting with a letter”.<\/p>\n

Now, consider uniqueness – some resources have an associated DNS name<\/a> (e.g. *.cloudapp.net) that needs to be available for use.<\/p>\n

I generally advise against including organisation names in resources like server names (because resources often outlive organisation names) but, in this case, the organisation name is likely to provide some uniqueness. So, let’s try “use letters and numbers only, in lower case, prefixed with an abbreviation for the organisation name, starting with a letter”.<\/p>\n

Then, lets think about the naming for the resources themselves\u00a0– a two letter code for the resource type (rr) and a suitable number of digits to count the instances (nn) – something like:<\/p>\n

orgrrnn<\/em><\/p>\n

This has two characters for the digits on the end, though three, or even four, may be better depending on the size of the organisation (remember to plan for growth!).\u00a0 You’ll also need to consider the total length of the name – between 3 and 15 characters appears to be the sweet spot (some may be longer, few may be shorter<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Resource types might be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Two-letter code<\/th>\nMeaning<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
ad<\/td>\nActive Directory<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
cs<\/td>\nCloud Service<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
db<\/td>\nDatabase<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
gw<\/td>\nGateway<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
ln<\/td>\nLocal Network<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
ms<\/td>\nMedia Service<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
rg<\/td>\nResource Group<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
sg<\/td>\nStorage Account<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
sp<\/td>\nApp Service Plan<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
sn<\/td>\nSubnet<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
tm<\/td>\nTraffic Manager<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
vm<\/td>\nVirtual Machine<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
vn<\/td>\nVirtual Network<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
wa<\/td>\nWeb App (App Service)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

For my recent batch of resources when I was studying for an exam, that led to names like:<\/p>\n