The maximum length of an application or tier name is 100 characters. The maximum length of a node name is 225 characters for Linux and 500 characters for all other operating systems. In your tier, node, and application names, you should avoid certain special characters. The characters you can use are listed on the Tiers and Nodes page.

Generally, node names should be unique. However, nodes that reside on different tiers and different machines (hosts) can have duplicate node names.

Within a business application, node namesshould always be uniquein the following use cases:

• If the nodes reside on the same tier, but on different machines
• If the nodes reside on the same machine, but on different tiers

• Node names and machine names must unique. When a node is registered to a Controller, it is associated with the machine it is on, and cannot be moved to another machine without changing the node name.

If the nodes names are the same in the aforementioned use cases, the nodes will not register or report successfully.

To rename an application, see Business Applications.

For node naming conventions by agent type, see the installation page for that agent, such as Node.js Agent or PHP Agent.