What to name your DAG?

Was helping a customer the other day and the topic of what to name your DAG (Exchange Database Availability Group) was presented.

One thought is to just name it ‘DAG’. Works well, but the issue is, when migrating from Exchange Server 2010 to Exchange Server 2013, or 2010 to 2016, or 2013 to 2019, etc. you cannot just slip in a newer Exchange Server version into an existing DAG. It’s one process that would be cool to perform, but so far, and in the near planned future, the Exchange Product Group will not allow it. Therefore, you need to stand up a newly named DAG each and every Exchange version.

The customer went with DAG2K16. At least it’s a good description and when the customer goes to Exchange Server 2022, they must create a new DAG and might as well call it DAG2K22 or something descriptive to note the difference.

The other option is to keep going back and forth from DAG to DAG1 to DAG to DAG1. This discussion is obviously for single DAG environments. If you have multiple DAG’s, many other options and choices would need to be hash out on what naming convention works best for you. It’s all choice.