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LiamG14's avatar
LiamG14
Copper Contributor
Dec 16, 2019

Hostname Character Limit

Still being limited to 15 characters for hostnames in 2019 is very upsetting. In an age where we are deploying servers in multiple data centres, whether that be on premise or in the cloud and having ...
Active Directory
management
Windows Server
dretzer's avatar
dretzer
Iron Contributor
Dec 16, 2019

Actually you can already have longer hostnames. In Server 2019 and current Windows 10 Client Editions you can have much longer hostnames. You will still get a warning about NETBIOS though.

If you choose a hostname longer than 15 characters, it will work without problems as long as you don't use any services that depend on NETBIOS. Windows will generate a shorter, 15 character name for NETBIOS and you will have a different NETBIOS-name than hostname. If you have no dependand services in use, or disabled NETBIOS entirely in your network, you can safely use longer hostnames. If you are unsure or you still use NETBIOS in your network, you should keep your hostnames to 15 characters or less.

The limit is simply from the NETBIOS protocol, which has a limit of 16 bytes for the computername. The last byte in Windows networking is used for a service ID, hence the 15 byte (characters) limit on NETBIOS-compatible hostnames.

 

Anyway, what you wish is already possible, so just use longer hostnames if you want to. If you still use older Windows versions that do not allow to exceed the NETBIOS naming limit, and longer names are important to you, you should consider upgrading to more current operting systems.

 

LiamG14 

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