Server Group and Server Role Name Guidelines

Server group names and server role names can be set to any arbitrary string if only using YAML configuration files (barring use of the restricted ‘,’ (comma) character, which serves as a delimiter in the server_groups and server_roles query parameters). However, it is strongly recommended to follow these guidelines to maintain flexibility in using these names via command-line or environment variables:

• Use all-lowercase names; on some systems, environment variable names are not case-sensitive. The proxy will automatically lower-case names in environment variables when parsing them.

• Use only the letters a-z and the numbers 0-9 if possible. Most systems only support these characters and the underscore in environment variable names. If you use an underscore in a server group name or server role name in a YAML configuration file and want to refer to that group or role in an environment variable, strip the underscores out of the name when constructing the environment variable. For example, if you have a server group named "my_special_group" in your YAML configuration file and you need to override its "tags" option, the environment variable to do so would be EMSRESTD_EMS_SERVER_GROUPS_MYSPECIALGROUP_TAGS. This can cause ambiguity in certain cases - for example, if you had another server group named "myspecial_group".

• Avoid special shell characters - for example, $, %, !, ", etc. These are both not allowable in environment variable names and also can cause unexpected, shell-dependent behavior if used on the command-line.