When it comes to moving data between different servers, being able to assign a second server name to the same server could be very useful. It’s not only possible but fairly easy to do as well.
Adding alternate DNS name to a Server
If DNS name resolution is the only thing you need, you can either manually add an A record in the DNS server to point the old server name to the same IP address of the new server or add a REG_Multi_SZ registry key to the following location:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\DNSCache\Parameters\AlternateComputerNames
One FQDN per line and run ipconfig /registerdns for the change to take place.
Adding alternate NetBIOS name to a Server
Add a REG_Multi_SZ registry key to the following location:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanManServer\Parameters\OptionalNames
One NetBIOS name per line and restart the server once done.
If you are adding an additional NetBIOS name to the same server, you most likely will need to access a shared network resource through that name. If that’s the case, you might need one more step to run the following command in an elevated Command Prompt to allow NTLM authentication for the new alias.
setspn -A host/host_servername alias_name
Just in case, if you encounter an error saying that the Target account name is incorrect when trying to access a shared file server after adding the name, you may need to use the setspn command line to check and remove the old NetBIOS name from another server.