$re = '/^server(\d{1,3})(?:(-[a-zA-Z]+)(\d{1,2}))?\.mydomain\.com/m';
$str = 'server255.mydomain.com // passes, expected
server255-Site69.mydomain.com // passes, expected
server25569.mydomain.com // passes, but shouldn\'t
server255699.mydomain.com // fails, expected
server25569-Site.mydomain.com // fails, expected';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php