I used to like systematic naming conventions until a major data centre replatforming project (several hundred applications and several thousand servers).
Changing hostnames was deemed too high risk (IP address changes broke enough things in poorly architected apps), so physical servers for one legacy DC moved to virtual servers in another DC retaining their old location based name.
Cue several years of telling people to ignore what they thought they could imply from the server's name when assessing change and to actually look at the detailed change plans.
Now I think that going back to random server names would be safer.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
