Thanks all,

We have situation like this;

We have 3 servers, for example they are named as SQL1, (dev)and SQL2(test), SQL3(prod). test and prod are same hardware and RAM.

When doing upgrade we do on dev first and test everything, this include windows upgrade and sQL server new version, migrating dbs.

Then we want to use the test box test1 to do the exactly the same thing but when done, we want switch this as a production server, then the old production server we will use as testing server.

In this case, we want to rename back for prod SQL3, and test SQL2.

We can keep the servername as they are, the developrs need to change the connection string.

Situation 2

When doing virtual to virtual server copy, after that we need to rename the server name, for the cloned copy still has the original copy name.

But by reading this post answers, do you mean most DBA don't do renaming server much.

You tell developers to change their connection string.

also you use alias name, it seems using alias name sometimes confusing too.

I really don't like to rename servers, because it leaves footprint of old computer name, that is why my original question raised.

What should I tell developers that renaming servers is harder than changing connection string in their code?

Thanks