When you create an Windows AMI (Amazon Machine Image) it is configured to generate a random server name. Often this name does not meet your needs. Maybe your company has a specific naming convention (e.g US-NYC-1234) or you just want to use a descriptive name (e.g. WEB01). Whatever the reason, let's look at how to set the name when you launch the machine. In this post we will use PowerShell to read the name from a Tag on the instance.