Naming conventions

We use the asset tag number as the name. All student machines begin with KCK in the name and all teacher machines being with APL in the name. Then set up smart groups accordingly by name. Then for specific buildings we do the building abbreviation and then KCK, so for example the building I support is Wyandotte high school, we use WYA_KCK#asset_tag

School Initials ­ Use ­ Location (We currently identify machines use as
A-Admin, S-Student and T-Teacher.)

Examples: Echo Park Elementary - Student - Lab location and unit
EP-S-Lab01-14

Westview Elementary ­ Teacher/Student - Classroom# WV-TS-Class402 Westview Elementary ­ Student ­ Media and unit WV-S-Media02

-- Mark Sampers
Technology Support Cluster Specialist
Independent School District 196
Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan Public Schools
3455 153rd Street West
Rosemount, MN 55068
651-423-7973

On 12/2/09 4:06 PM, "Brad Gunnells" <brad-gunnells at uiowa.edu> wrote:

Recently I've been tasked with looking at updating our naming convention for the computers we support. Currently in our student computer labs we use a short and simple name (WEM01 for example). WE is short for our building name and M is Macintosh station #1. Simple and straightforward. Over the years we've picked up library computers and classrooms (instructor teaching station) where there is one computer per room but may be several in the building in different rooms/floors. We're trying to come up with a universal naming convention that we can identify where a machine is located (building, floor, room) and if it's a teaching station, student lab computer, or possibly a terminal server. The scenarios I come up with are quite lengthy and thought I'd see how others developed/structured naming conventions. How do you name and keep track of what you support? Thanks Brad --------------------------------------------------------------------- Brad Gunnells University of Iowa Information Technology Services Campus Technology Services/Learning Spaces Technology Iowa City IA 52242 (319)335-5524 FAX (319)335-5505 mailto:brad-gunnells at uiowa.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------

---

Casper mailing list Casper at list.jamfsoftware.com http://list.jamfsoftware.com/mailman/listinfo/casper

Here is an example of how we do things.

ATEC-M2-RMANLY

Admin building
Technology Dept.
Mac OS - in Windows this field is P ( all staff a dual-booting machine with
Parallels )
2 = iMac - we have 9 different hardware systems that are meaningful to us
Me :)

All the staff are done using this method.

Students are done a *little* differently because we care more about where
the computer is vs. who it belongs to.

NSTU-A208-M01

North Building
Student machine
Room A208
Mac OS
Station 1

Ryan M. Manly
Mac OS X Expert
Glenbrook High Schools
1835 Landwehr Rd.
Glenview, IL 60026
(847) 486-4948

On a side note I developed a couple of scripts that set the computer name to a config file and then another script that runs locally and checks the current computer name versus the name cached in the config file. If they match the script exits, if they don't match it gets renamed to the name cached in the config file and then exits.

This is crucial to help maintain computer name when you have users that are also admins, and they like to change their computer names; or some non admin finds some widget or another app or device that allows them to rename their computer. All my smart groups are based on computer name so naming convention is important to us.

You can make the check name script "available offline" in Casper and it will cache itself to the machine locally and run once a day. This is also handy if you have lots of laptops as you will always have those handful of users that clear firmware and give them self admin access. Then possibly change the computer name.