Friendly name in SSMS for the servers

Question

Hi,
As part of my work, I have to connect to multiple servers in SQL Server Management Studio. Is there any way, I can give them friendly name such as CRM Prod, Hub Prod rather than seryudp1/p2 or SERLIHYPM01/F03. So that, when i press the drop down in Server Name, I couls see only the friendly names rather than complex server naames.I saw some articles in the google but they are not clear. Can anyone give me some better idea on that?

thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Hi,
As part of my work, I have to connect to multiple servers in SQL Server Management Studio. Is there any way, I can give them friendly name such as CRM Prod, Hub Prod rather than seryudp1/p2 or SERLIHYPM01/F03. So that, when i press the drop down in Server Name, I couls see only the friendly names rather than complex server naames.I saw some articles in the google but they are not clear. Can anyone give me some better idea on that?

thanks in advance!

Good day Manesar,

You can use Azure Management Studio instead of the SQL Server Management Studio. This is Microsoft new database management studio which has huge advantages and new features including the option to store the connections strings for next time and give a name/color for each connection.

I recommend to use the version without installation. I think that one of the main features which I like in this app is that we do not need to install anything and you can have in your Disk-On-Key for example and use it anywhere you go

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/azure-data-studio/download?view=sql-server-2017

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Ronen Ariely  [Personal Site]    [Blog]    [Facebook]    [Linkedin]

Answer 2

thanks much! After installing this, can i use this like  SSMS with the friendlier server name?

Answer 3

Hi Manesar,

Just to complement Ronen's answer, here is where you can assign a friendly name for the server in Azure Data Studio. All credits go to Ronen.

Answer 4

Well done Yitzhak👍
I was lazy to add screenshot :-)

Jut one important point Manesar: this is not friendly name for the server. The server has nothing to do with this name. This is friendly name for the connection (it is only a parameter in the application side).

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Ronen Ariely  [Personal Site]    [Blog]    [Facebook]    [Linkedin]

Answer 5

Is there any way, I can give them friendly name such as CRM Prod, Hub Prod rather than seryudp1/p2 or SERLIHYPM01/F03. So that, when i press the drop down in Server Name, I couls see only the friendly names rather than complex server naames.I saw some articles in the google but they are not clear. 

The new Azure data studio is always good for this. 

But please also check if Registered servers in SSMS helps you. Refer the screenshots in below link.

https://codingsight.com/registered-server-1/

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Regards,
Vaibhav

Answer 6

Vaibhav correct 👍 This is another tool for the task

definitely Registered servers in SSMS is a great tool which gives option to manage connections to servers.
It is similar in the idea regarding adding friendly name to connections, but there are some small differences.
I am not saying what best (I prefer ADS over SSMS) but present some information to take into consideration 

For example in Azure Data Studio it is done as part of the explorer tab, but in the SSMS it is separate tool/windows and when you want to explore the entities of the server (for example the databases-> tables...) then you need to open the explorer windows (can be done by double click on the connection) separately.

This mean that you menage the groups in one windows and explore the server in another windows.

In the other side, this is more powerful tool (at this time) and it allow tasks on groups like open a query editor which will be executed on all the connections, and there more tasks.

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Ronen Ariely  [Personal Site]    [Blog]    [Facebook]    [Linkedin]

Answer 7

Nice feature Vaibhav. Rather installing a new tool, this feature in Management Studio helps.