Greg Low provides some good advice:
I’m not a great fan of linked servers in SQL Server but they are often necessary. If I’m working with the latest version of SQL Server, I really prefer to use External Data Sources and External Tables. But not everyone is on the latest version. In the meantime, what I see all the time, is people hardcoding server names like this:
SDUPROD2022.WWIDB.Payroll.Employees
That makes your code really hard to manage.
Read on for several options. At a prior company quite a while ago, we went with DNS entries and they worked reasonably well.