Implementing proper resource naming conventions

Becoming an Azure administrator means governing tens of hundreds of cloud resources. To be really productive here, you have to find a way to quickly find what you are looking for, without having to check the documentation or ask other people where a resource can be found. The real ace in the hole here is to find the naming convention that covers multiple projects and allows you to cover different domains of the business. In this section, we will discuss the different options that are available and what can be done to constrain them.

To get started, you have to understand why having a proper naming convention is crucial for many projects and administering them:

• You may have difficulty changing the name of a resource once it is provisioned.
• Once a naming convention is established, it is easy to find services that do not follow it.
• When a proper name is used, you can quickly understand its purpose, without the need to enter an extra command or browse the portal.

To cut a long story short, you are saving time when a convention is enforced. You should ensure that all the names are as verbose as possible. This, of course, will differ depending on the Azure service selected:

• When using Azure Storage, its name must be between 3 and 24 characters in length. You are not allowed to use anything besides letters and numbers.
• A resource group can be a maximum of 90 characters in length.
• Azure App Service offers a maximum of a little over 200 characters to be used as the service name.

Considered all these factors, you have to make sure that your naming convention does not block anybody from provisioning a resource. 

There are many different levels when it comes to implementing a naming convention:

• Subscription
• Resource group
• Resources

Depending on the level, you may need a different convention to meet your requirements. Let's look at each of them.