I work at a large university with a fairly flat domain. This means just about every computer is is name.university.edu, and every computer needs a name for the central database. The hardest part about this naming is avoiding conflicts. Most "common" naming schemes were taken two decades go, so adding a little prefix allows me to reuse a lot of names. Basically, adding another prefix exponentially grows the name space.

I opted for the most boring naming system because it made logical sense. [department abrev]-[PI abrev]-[usage abrev][Number]. This leads to names like ee-she-s03 for the third server for the Sheron group in the electrical engineering department. I can always create aliases for stuff that's commonly referenced.