Virtual Machine Naming Convention

You must use two different naming conventions when creating virtual machines. The first naming convention defines the Self-Service Portal name and the second defines the hostname.

Self-Service portal name

When you create a virtual machine in the self-service portal, you must give it a name. The convention we use is to name your machine:

[username]-machinename

NOTE: if your username is longer than 8 characters, shorten it to 8 characters.

This allows us to see your machines grouped together when sorted by name and allows us to easily identify the owners of virtual machines. Note that the machinename will often be dictated by your professor.

Hostname

When you install the operating system you will be required to give your server a hostname. This is what you would normally use for an internet net such as [hostname].cs.southern.edu. In the case of this server the hostname is "dra". When assigning a hostname to your servers you should use the following conventions:

1. machinename.[username].internal e.g. router.scot.internal OR

2. machinename.cs.southern.edu

For CPTE230, your linux machine you should use convention (a) for all other machines you should use convention (b). NOTE: for the windows machines in CPTE 230, I refer to the first Windows Server installed as cpte230a.scot.internal in my documentation.