DBAs hate the GUID appended to a database name. Everyone does! But that will happen if the farm and the Service Applications within are created with a wizard.

Example:

To make sure the database names are “clean”, farm admins can create the farm using psconfig.exe and create the Service Applications and Content Catabases with PowerShell. But what if a farm has been created and the databases already have GUID in their names? When you just take over a new farm, this may be the case, and you may be lucky enough to be assigned the task to change the names. 🙂

Just do the steps below to get rid of the GUIDs:

For the Central Administration site content database, you need to move the site to a new Content Database. Follow the steps:

1. Create a new databases with proper names and configuration.
2. Move the sites with Move-SPSite PowerShell cmdlet to move the sites to the new databases.
3. Verify the sites are working correctly after the move.
4. Delete the old databases.

For the user Content Databases, you can rename the databases. Follow the steps:

1. Dismount the database from SharePoint Web Applications with Dismount-SPContentDatabase PowerShell cmdlet.
2. Rename the dismounted database in SQL Server with ALTER DATABASE T-SQL command or in the Object Explorer.
3. Mount the renamed database to SharePoint Web Applications with Mount-SPContentDatabase PowerShell cmdlet.

For Service Application databases, you need to rename the databases with additional actions and it is specific to each service application. Check this TechNet article to find information for the service applications you are using.

Example:

Done!