Server Naming Conventions? 961
The reader continues:
"Here's a few ideas we've been tossing around, using Joe's Deli as an example:
- [four letter "name"][two letter service type][2 numbers]
eg) jdelwb03.domain.com
+ easy to determine the function and name
- hard to remember and pronounce, once you run out of four
character servers, determining the name and function will be
difficult. Joe's Deli and John's Delivery will have conflicting
names
- [random combination of numbers and letters]
eg) ak1jop3d.domain.com
+ none really
- confusing.. really confusing. Can you imagine saying to someone
"log on to alpha kappa one john omikron peter three delta?"
- [theme based name]
name servers based on a theme, eg Gundam
eg) zaku.domain.com, gelgoog.domain.com
+ easily identifiable - all Gundam names belong to Joe's Deli,
easy to pronounce and remember
- hard for a new tech or management (why would they need to know?)
to associate to a server
"I'd like to know what others in the tech community use for server naming policies when planning large scale data centres. Also, with data centres located nationally, does the naming convention pose any problems? Thanks."
Seven Dwarfs? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Seven Dwarfs? (Score:5, Funny)
Remainder? (Score:4, Funny)
If you had stuck with the word "answer" you would have been fine. But you had to try to look smart and look where that got you! Modded up as funny, while making a simple mistake yourself!
If I were clever, I would leave a clever comment here.
And after seven... (Score:5, Funny)
The two I remember were "sleazy" and "scuzzy".
Re:And after seven... (Score:3, Funny)
It's spelled SCSI.
--
Evan
Re:And after seven... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And after seven... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:No... (Score:5, Funny)
Sleepy was killed in 1968 when he accidently drove off a cliff (most people who know Sleepy dispute the police report that indicated alcohol was to blame).
Sneezy died of natural causes in 1973 (pollen counts were extremely high that year).
Happy and Dopey were found dead in a hotel room in 1982 of an aparent heroin overdose.
Sci-Fi (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sci-Fi (Score:2)
"All web servers will have robot names from Asimov".
The place I use to work named all thier web servers after characters from the spiderman comic.
Re:Sci-Fi (Score:3, Funny)
"So, did you install that latest patch on Phoenix?" sounds a lot better than "Updated TTIBDC01 lately?"
Of course, with that many servers, you're better off naming them with random character strings. Here, I'll get you started...
for($i=0;$i<4000;$i++)
$hostname[] = md5(rand(0,(float) microtime() * 10000000));
:D
Much too complicated! (Score:3, Funny)
Far more logical to name as follows:
SRVR1
.
.
.
SRVR4000
It is a simple matter then to hand out a quick-reference pamphlet to your users defining what each server is.
Be sure to order the reference by server name, rather than function or department, as this is how they will be listed in Network Neighborhood. Your users cannot be expected to understand the difference between a print server and a SQL server anyway - no need to confuse them any more than necessary.
(and if you really do this I want a copy of your next performance review! rofl...)
Re:Instead of Sci-Fi (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Instead of Sci-Fi (Score:4, Funny)
It is now named Urectum.
Re:Sci-Fi (Score:3, Funny)
Naming Conventions. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Naming Conventions. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a student at Stanford, and one of my profs set up a lab a couple years back where each of the workstations was a logical operation. And, Xor, Nand, Or, Iff, etc.
The server was called "gates", because each of these is a logic gate.
Then, Bill Gates donated money and there was going to be a Gates Computer Science building.
Needless to say, my prof lost his name pretty damn quickly, and old Bill was relented to.
Re:Naming Conventions. (Score:4, Informative)
Personally, I named my home servers "riffraff", "columbia", my laptop "eddie", my palmtop "sadie", and so on. My work servers are "ritz", "tim", "susan", etc. For those of you who get it, it's a pretty simple naming scheme, and for those who don't, the work ones are respectable, non-geeky at a glance, and easy to remember.
For large numbers of computers, name them by department and number. Or location and number. Room/cube numbers seem like a good idea until you start swaping offices and cubes. Best off keeping the numbers semi-random so you don't expect anything, and just log where they are/their name in your asset management software. A system moving inter-department/location will have to be wiped. Period. Easier to track software licenses anyway (especially if each department has a seperate software budget). If you've set up your users correctly, all their files are on the server, anyway. Don't use "Four character and number" or something like that. No reason to say MKEC4711 when it can just be marketingeastcoast-4711. YMMV depending on legacy systems you have to chat with or through.
--
Evan "Back in my day, we walked around the office looking at the back of each computer for the ring that fell out of the token network. And we *liked* it".
Re:Naming Conventions. (Score:3, Funny)
--
Evan "Lovely network - WP 5.1 on a bunch of 8086s and 80286s for the real important types"
Re:Naming Conventions. (Score:3, Funny)
One place where I worked had (city code)(location code)(machine designation)(colour) - lots of offices in the same city.
Anyway, a typical server name would be NYCVENSGREEN. The key was that they all had an S before the colour, which lead to such names as
STEAK
SLIME
STEAL
Ah - the hours we spent trying to think these up.
Element names work well for a small low-order net (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Element names work well for a small low-order n (Score:5, Funny)
What did he choose?
Immodium.
That still cracks me up - (thanks, Dave!)
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
Re:Element names work well for a small low-order n (Score:3, Funny)
Moron is a good element too.
Re:Element names work well for a small low-order n (Score:5, Funny)
BORON
Re:Element names work well for a small low-order n (Score:4, Funny)
I like elements though, very clever!
Re:Element names work well for a small low-order n (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I favor naming them after scientists - this is what 95% of the world's laboratories in every field do. The two computers in my dad's lab are Watson and Crick (he doesn't even work with DNA). Substitute other sorts of famous people; presidents, athletes, whatever.
The anime characters are good, if that's what people in your group can remember. One lab I was in that had a lot of computers used deities; Linux were Hindu deities, NT were Greek, and Irix were Egyptian. We added a Mac (OS X) which I named Arawn (Welsh deity).
With 200 machines, you're gonna run out of pet names really fast, so I think you'd need to assign a whole new category of names to each busines, so Joe's Delivery could get Rolling Stones songs, and John's Delicatessen could get war criminals. That would be cool, and that way any administrative subdivisions could use naming conventions that they were good at remembering.
Oh! I have an idea, you could assign each company a word (Winter and Dog, say) and name every computer associated with that company that word, in a different language. All of the web-servers could be french (Hiver and Chien?), the POP servers spanish (Invierno and Perro) and so forth.
Re:Element names work well for a small low-order n (Score:3, Funny)
-Derek
Just to annoy the RIAA (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Just to annoy the RIAA (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Just to annoy the RIAA (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Just to annoy the RIAA (Score:5, Funny)
Phrasing is everything.
Re:Just to annoy the RIAA (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder what it means that my first thought was "the servers named Britney and J-Lo have stopped functioning" and it took almost a full 10 seconds before I realized the other meaning...
Damn, I need to get out more...
alphanumeric dotted quad (Score:5, Interesting)
This lets you distinguish between the server number in a rotation (the second element) and the specific service it is supporting (the first element).
Subdomain by function (Score:5, Insightful)
Skip the themes for individual server names. You can use themes for DNS subdomains, but you don't need to actually name the "gemini" server group *.gemini.foo.com, but you can call the *.g.foo.com server group the gemini group.
You don't need to throw any reference to the operating system in the DNS name. If you replace a server with one from a different OS (like you migrate your database from HPUX to AS/400 or Linux), then you have to run around to several places and change the DNS name that other boxes point to. It also allows you to cluster mixed operating systems (good for reliability), and to transition from one OS to the other.
Finally, name your servers numerically as you add them to each sub-function group. Old servers that are slow and coming off lease soon will have lower numbers than higher ones. Just start with A0000001 for the first one in each domain, and go. If there are too many servers starting with A, then be slightly redundant and have the first letter of the server name match the single-letter subdomain. The first DNS server would be d00000001.d.foo.com.
Government conspiracies (Score:5, Funny)
Lucifer (Score:2)
Also, I have another client where the machines are named after planets, with the server being called THESUN, but one extremely annoying woman has URANUS.
themes are good (Score:2)
1) cities in Mexico
2) old video game characters
3) strange animals
simpsons character names are a common theme. at my current job, they name servers after old comedians (ollie, bud, lou) and give them aliases that sound more clinical. i.e. the nameserver has its colloquial name but it's also known as ns1.domain.com.
another place I worked at named servers after the latin form of volcano names, i.e. krakatoa, helena, etc.
- Josh
Re:themes are good (Score:4, Funny)
Why stick to just one domain? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why stick to just one domain? (Score:3)
Our Convention (Score:2, Interesting)
[2 letters] - data center
[3 letters] - group name
[2 letters] - service type (wb, sq, lb)
[3 characters] - server number (A01, A02)
it works pretty well. For something with only one datacenter you may try some sort of physical location indicator rather than a data center name like server row number. It makes it a heck of a lot easier when you need to physically track down a server.
Check the RFC (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Check the RFC (Score:2)
Boot up.
Which server?
Up.
or something
Boot Up! (Score:5, Funny)
B:Which server?
A:Up.
B:Up who?
A:The server.
B:Which?
A:Boot up.
B:Boot up what server?
A:No no what server should stay up!
B:I don't know.
A:No no that's our web server.
B:Your web server is "I don't know"?
A:Yes. But nevermind, we need to boot up.
B:What server?
A:What server should stay up.
B:I'm ASKING YOU THAT! WHAT SERVER SHOULD STAY UP?
A:Certainly.
B:Oh at last! So certainly should stay up. Ok, so I should boot what server?
A:No no no, what server should stay up!
B:Certainly.
A:OK, so now boot up!
B:AAAAARGH! What does that server do?
A:It's a mail server.
B:So, what you get mail what server does it say in the headers it's from?
A:No no, what server's our web server. It says it's from up.
B:What do you mean up? Mail can't come from up!
A:It can if it's our mail server.
B:You're mail server is called "it" and it should boot it up?
A:No no no! It's our DNS server! We should be booting up!
B:So we should be booting it up?
A:No. We should be booting up.
B:THAT'S WHAT I SAID!
...
Re:Check the RFC (Score:3, Interesting)
Of historical interest, from the RFC (written in 1990): "Extremely well-known hostnames such as 'sri-nic' and 'uunet' should be avoided since they are understood in conversation as absolute addresses even without a domain." I consider myself a bit of an old-timer, but though I recognize uunet, I've never even heard of sri-nic. I'm sure someone knows about this; please inform!
Re:Check the RFC (Score:3, Informative)
The accessibility of distributed resources carried with it the need for an information service (either centralized or distributed) that enables users to learn about those resources. This was recognized at the PI [ed. Primary Instigators] meeting in Michigan in the spring of 1967. At the time, Doug Engelbart and his group at the Stanford Research Institute were already involved in research and development to provide a computer-based facility to augment human interaction. Thus, it was decided that Stanford Research Institute would be a suitable place for a "Network Information Center" (NIC) to be established for the ARPANET. With the beginning of implementation of the network in 1969, construction also began on the NIC at SRI."
The Stanford Research Institute's Network Information Center (SRI-NIC) became the responsible authority for maintaining unique host names for the Internet. The SRI-NIC maintained a single file, called hosts.txt, and sites would continuously update SRI-NIC with their host name to IP address mappings to add to, delete from, or change in the file.
This was the first semi-distributed name resolution on the Internet. You all understand that eventually the hosts file became too big and led to the development of BIND (DNS Service).
Re:Check the RFC (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Check the RFC (Score:3, Funny)
No no no... (Score:5, Funny)
AD87D0A9S8D90A9D80AD90ASD8A0D80F0A80D8F0AASD3
if that isn't easy to remember I don't know what is!
Famous People (Score:2, Funny)
einstein
redford
lay
Don't name the machines after what they do (Score:5, Insightful)
My company is an example of extremely stupid behavior. We have desktop machines named jsmithw2knyc. Anytime the machine is reassigned to another person, moved from office to office, or changes operating systems, the hostname and DNS must be updated. It's silly.
Re:Don't name the machines after what they do (Score:2, Interesting)
Comicbook character names and so-forth are fun, but can be seen as unprofessional by some, and possibly even offensive in some cases.
That's what CNAMES are for (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, we have our servers named after the characters from Cheers - norm, diane, cliff, lillith, etc.
We also have functional names - smtp, pop3, dns, etc.
Now, in the DNS records, we have:
smtp CNAME cliff
pop3 CNAME cliff
dns CNAME norm
As a result, the clients are configured to send mail to smtp, get mail from pop3, but that is mapped into cliff. If we move outbound mail to norm, we just change the cname.
Re:That's what CNAMES are for (Score:2, Informative)
Re:That's what CNAMES are for (Score:4, Informative)
Problem solved.
Re:Don't name the machines after what they do (Score:2)
Plus, its somewhat of a security risk to name your servers too specifically. Lets intruders know EXACTLY which servers to go after without even looking at them closley (i.e pridns.company.org, secdns.company.org, etc.)
Norms (Score:2)
Alternatively, split them into 4+2+2, or 5+1+2. 5+1+2 is pretty versatile, project + code + number.
The trend seems to be going away from "real" names in the past 5-8 years... One customer of mine had all their printers named after Disney characters. I think the problem is keeping to themes; one place I worked had planets and moons for differnet types of boxes, but people started adding stars, or getting confused about what's a moon! It's also limiting in that after the 9th "planet-type" system, what do you do when you order 5 new servers? It may be possible to keep getting more obscure, but you lose the practicality which was the main purpose.
Close to home (Score:3, Interesting)
For my little network at the home office I use the original (pre- annexation) names of streets in the neighborhood.
My wife thinks this is cool because she loves local history.
I think it's cool because I get to use names like maple, kuchle, liberty, newburgh, and columbus. Only the real old-timers from the hood get it. They enjoy knowing a little something about computers that younger people don't, even though it's totally non-technical.
As a practical matter, it's a nearly inexhaustible "theme" category; as you need more names, just reach out to a larger radius. In a decent-sized city you'll need a full Class C to max out the theme.
DNS? (Score:2)
This way you can create something more hierarchical and verbose.
Example:
# joe dehli's first workstation (ws)
jdehli1.ws.mydomain.com
# joe dehli's second workstation (ws)
jdehli2.ws.mydomain.com
# first mass-storage file server (srv)
files1.srv.mydomain.com
# second mass-storage file server (srv)
files2.srv.mydomain.com
You can even go so far as to use LDAP for resolution depending on what platforms you plan on supporting and what needs you have for this naming system.
Just some ideas.
Justin Dubs
Naming Conventions (Score:5, Interesting)
At the company I work at, we have ~5000 servers worldwide, and they all follow the same naming convention:
Thus, a production server in Minneapolis, Minnesota would be usmnminpsnnn , or a development server in Vancouver, BC, would be cabcvandsnnn .
Re:Naming Conventions (Score:5, Interesting)
I think snnn.ps.min.mn.us.company.com will look way better.
Re:Naming Conventions (Score:3, Funny)
9A962BCC-97E0-4268-ABD4-FB5E7236DF64
AAEBD785-B9CB-405c-A09A-91719C979626
DDDFB01E-5979-454f-BE1E-175453F52127
Etc.
Then its sort of like remembering phone numbers. What, you can't rememberize 4000+ phone numbers? Then you buy ACT! or some other contact management software. Then you set up contact reminders to make you remember to ping the server to make sure its alive or back it up. Your reminder list probably wouldn't be more than a few hundred entries on each day. You could polish that off before lunch. Then ask for a raise because you solved the problem without doing hardly any work! Thats reusability, and they pay people a lot to be good at it you know.
i've worked in a similar environment (Score:5, Interesting)
Major cities. (Score:2, Interesting)
As an extra special bonus, it makes you feel like you're the president or something when you're having meetings about various world cities. Or at least.. uh.. it makes me feel that way.
well...duh.... (Score:2, Interesting)
for example
MR237BWEB01 - Mail Room number 237B Webserver 1.
CONF225FIL01 - Conference room 225 File Server 1.
EXTCOMPWEB01 - External Company web server 1.
alternatively you could also do the theme thing and assign some genre to a particular department.
for example, all accounting servers could be named after fish e.g. bluefish, haddock, trout, etc.
or colors or star wars themes or anything else.
i prefer the dept/room number/server type/server number scheme myself and using acronyms you could easily keep it under 8 characters for the host name.
Of course be sure to add the host names into a comma delimited file with an explanation and ip address/subnet and room location of the server (or rack location). Make sure you keep the file someplace publically accessible like on a webserver someplace.
Why not langauges? (Score:2)
:Peter
Re:Why not langauges? (Score:2)
:Peter
people names? (Score:2, Interesting)
Row + Column + 4 letter name (Score:2, Interesting)
They had the name as such:
Row + Column + 4 letter name.
So, for the Joe's Deli example, which is in row 15 and column 20, you could have:
1520jdel.domain.com
You could also have:
Row + Column + 2 letter name + 2 letter service type
So for Joe's Deli again:
1520jdwb.domain.com
The downside is if you physically move the servers around, it can cause problems.
Scifi or classic literature (Score:2, Insightful)
In general, a genre of science fiction would tend to work, as scifi stories tend to have large numbers of "named things" in them for some reason. (Just thing of all the planets mentioned at some point in the Foundation series).
Famous literature is a good source as well. How about cluster of Caddy, Benjy, Jason, and Quentin? We'll be naming the "important boxes", ie a primary name server, after the author, with the backup or subsidary boxes named after characters in books they've written. It's a pretty easy method to come up with new names, and if you're an IB student you'll have no problem recognizing what cluster a specific machine belongs to
More themes (Score:2, Funny)
World Beers --> Fun to sample the potential names....
PHB "What do you think you're doing"
Lackey "Naming the servers sir, just 3500 more beers to go ..."
Re:More themes (Score:5, Funny)
"Hey, would you try DoggyStyle? I can't get in.
Two conventions I like: (Score:4, Interesting)
convention is a nice shortcut when a script
kiddie is portscanning.
2. Naming conventions. (I.e. name the
Web server "Tolkein-Place-Names", the
mail server "Famous-Composers", et cetera.)
If covering a large area.... (Score:2, Interesting)
LOTR (Score:2, Funny)
the ways I've seen it done.. (Score:3, Redundant)
customer-01.jfk.foo.net
Worked fairly well. We used the code for the closest airport for the geography portion. Also served to make dns adminning a mite prettier. Course that provides you're not against overly specific domain names. The '01' could also be replaced with significant letters for certain machines. customer-fw, for example, would be customer's firewall.
A more bureaucratic approach that we did at another job combined the theme idea with the department name. This works in a place where there are lot of computing divisions that have their own little kingdom of machines. Like where I work, we're known as "D0". Thus, we call our machines d0nut, d0mino, d0om, you get the idea.
We also have an unofficial series system that borrows on the idea, d0lx001 is d0's first linux node. Again, it works well for the scope it's been defined for.
I wager a nicely scalable system could be built using a combination of my two examples. If your machines have limits on hostname length, check on the limits of dns heirarchy. They may allow finer granularity.
For small organizations (under 20 machines, not counting workstations), theme oriented works just fine.
Lands (Score:2)
Another thing used at my workplace is having a cname for (machine #).(rack #).(server closet #).foo.bar Useful when you've tons of the same looking machines that don't move much.
At an isp I worked at previously their names were (use)(O-S)(##).(location ID).domain.com Like wwwbsd01.berlin01.******.com
My best recommendation is to have a 'proper' name for things, and a cname to something that's memorable for the people that need to work on the machine.
The answer's up in the sky (Score:2)
You could sort all of your company's machines into multiple bins based on which room they're in. Then, let's say you have two main rooms of machines -- one room will have machines with star or constellation names starting with A-K, the other, L-Z.
Here's a helpful listing: http://www.ras.ucalgary.ca/~gibson/starnames/star
So, you would know automatically which room to head to if someone called for help saying that "Orion" just crashed
MONOLINUX
be sensible (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I'd encode them using one or two characters to denote the platform ( i = intel, s = sun, h = hp, blah blah). Then use the additional characters to denote room, rack, etc etc. If you're allowed to use sub domains that makes your life much easier.
Maybe I'm over pragmatic
If you absolutely have/want to use 'friendly' names. Give your machines multiple names..... the pretty one, and the ugly sensible one so you can easily map between the two when you have to.
I hate to use it as an example --- but look at Hotmail when you log in. They are using subdomains and strict naming conventions for there servers. It's the only sensible thing to do..... unless you're trying to guarantee youself job security (and if thats the case and I was your boss and I found out i'd fire your ass for being a moron).
Re:be sensible (Score:5, Interesting)
That's stupid. Now if I move the server from one rack space to another, or upgrade it to a different platform then all my users have to change the config on any applications that reference the server? Not a long term scalable solution.
Keep location and platform information in a seperate document or database. Or create HINFO records in DNS.
Re:be sensible (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus most switches have an ability to lookup via mac address. After all, why ask 1000 people when you can ask a few switches? You'll likely just unplug the offender anyways.
Re:be sensible (Score:3, Insightful)
If poopy-snoopy server starts sending excessive broadcasts, I just open up the trouble ticket system and search for resource name poopy-snoopy.... voila there it is, the person to call that is in control(physical) of that machine, and his cell,home,work numbers,ip address,physical location,hardware configuration, serial number,vendor (then a link to full vendor info).
Although... what I use is rare.. many, MANY, IT departments are not that organized nor ever take the time to get that organized..
What I used (Score:3, Interesting)
We had fights with management wanting names like MAIL01, MAIL02, etc. but I bit them down when I told them that if one server type ever got above 100 then it would be a bitch or over 1000, etc.
Upper management liked the scheme cause when they would show clients the server rooms they would see these great literature references on the boxes which made us look inteligent. Win + Win.
Don't get hung up on meaning. (Score:2)
If you're feeling playful, how about: starsky, hutch, huggybear, kotter, fonzi, richie, potsie, baretta, oscar, felix, etc.
If not: myco0001, myco0002, etc.
You can always assign aliases for functional purposes: mail, news, www, ftp, etc.
simple... (Score:2)
psxndc
Anything and EVERYTHING :-) (Score:2)
We have some servers named after function, i.e.
sales-prod0
sales-prod1
sales-prod2
I can't stand those. They're boring.
Then we have some named after things related to their function:
zuul
gozer
keymaster
(all firewalls)
OK, we're getting better...
Then we have some named after completely unrelated things:
who
what
idontknow
why
today
tomorr
(Those are E10k domains
Then we have other things named after children's books:
onefish
twofish
redfish
bluefish
Then we have cartoon characters:
boris
natasha
frostbitefalls
wayb
fred
barney
wilma
pebbles
bambam
Then we have the scifi stuff:
leguin
wintermute
asimov
And of course, no data center would be complete without Simpson characters:
homer
smithers
mr-burns
Of course, you could be like our west-coast data center and name your servers after mobsters...
The bottom line is that you need to have FUN with your hostnames! Besides that, it's better than naming your system important-financials-here.please-own-me.megaglobo
--NBVB
Depends on how many (Score:2)
At my old office, where we had regional servers, we had DHQNTA, DHQ19V, etc, that is Denver HQ, NT server A, 19 Vax, etc.
Currently, our 'rabbit farm' of NT servers (because the numbers keep growing by leaps and bounds) are named by service: SDevWeb01, SWeb, SMail, STestSQL01, etc.
S means it's a server, then Test Dev or Prod, plus a number if it's an actual server, or not if it's a cluster. Thus SWeb is the internal web cluster, but SWeb04 is one of the servers.
This works well if you've got two dozen servers or less...if you were Rackspace, I'd imagine naming the server after it's location on the rack, then pointing a DNS alias to it would be more helpful...pinging JoesBait&ISP is less helpful than pinging Rack014U14 when a NIC dies.
LABEL YOUR SERVERS! Nothing quite like using a console switch, pressing a reset button on the server underneath the console to reboot a dev box, only to realize you REALLY nuked a SIGNIFICANT portion of your enterprise File services!
Why not use the customers domains? (Score:2)
+ easy to determine the function and name
- hard to remember and pronounce, once you run out of four character servers, determining the name and function will be difficult. Joe's Deli and John's Delivery will have conflicting names
Why can't you just name them web.joesdeli.com and web.johnsdelivery.com?
Well there's an assanine article. (Score:2)
I suppose I'll a wee bit constructive just in case the author really does need help...
And anyone that needs more than one computer to run Joe's Deli should be cast out.
And Hey! Since slashdot is written by the community, shouldn't we be able to put our OWN inline ads into our content? Why does taco and company get to put ads in my content?
This comment is Copyright 2002 by Jim Studt. It may not be altered or republished with advertisements without his express permission.
3 Rules of Device Taxonomy (Score:3, Insightful)
Michael's 3 Rules of Device Taxonomy:
Mythology (Score:2)
For desktops/laptops, we use the city-name-abbreviation plus the asset number. No files are stored on the desks, there is very little call for connecting to them over the network.
Have fun with it. (Score:2)
I used to work in such a place. Large number of machines, physically spread out. We grouped them into areas, buildings and floors.
For example, the company was divided into divisions such as 'Extraction', 'Mining', 'Administration' etc. We then picked themes for each division. 'Mining' for example would be the domain "Wheels". Then we would name servers for vehicles - Harley, DeLorean, Corvette etc. For the "Mine Training" division, we chose "Training Wheels" for the domain name, and servers were called "Tricycle", "Scooter" etc. Since the domains were descriptive, it was easy to physically find the boxen. Plus in Lanman/NT descriptions we included info such as building, floor, room...
I've also worked in places that used a descriptive name, such as city/building/floor/room (or airport code), which is great if your network is spread out physically, but it's dry; cold; boring. YVR-NTS-EXC-001, will tell you it's in Vancouver, running NT Server and Exchange, server #1, but it's boring.
And don't forget to first decide on a standard place to put the name of the box phyically! Nothing like coming to a box after a year or two and asking someone, "What does that box do?" and no one can tell you because the sticky note that contained that information has long since lost it's stick.
If you can't have a little enjoyment on the job, why bother?
Conventions (Score:2, Interesting)
2 Character City Code
4 Character Building Code
2-3 Character Descriptor (WS, IIS, FS, ADP, etc)
2-3 Character # (For more than one box)
So we'd have "PHMAILSVR01" (Philadelphia Mail Building File Server #1)
Currently, our workstations are USERNAME-OS (ie; JDOE-W2K, JDOE-LNX, etc). Servers have great names (no set convention), but they do have aliases that are cleaner (fileserver1 == pinky).
-k
Your on the right track... (Score:2)
I would suggest coming up with a coding standard that provides the information you find valuable.
2 chars to define the OS or machine type
3 chars to define location
1 char for production or development
3 chars for a number sequence
So something like NTDFWP150 would be your 150th production NT server in Dallas. Maybe location isn't as important as purpose. Maybe you don't have development or production differentiation. I do think it's helpful for support staff to be able to tell what OS the machine is running by the machine name. If you are looking at 4000 servers at some point, then maybe 4-5 chars should be devoted to numbers.
Even though the name seems confusing, if you have a well defined pattern, it is trivial to train new staff. As far as linking this to customer names, you build a spreadsheet with a lookup table.
Actually a positive for random. (Score:2, Interesting)
Sheesh people, use subdomains (Score:5, Informative)
The LIRR homepage is http://www.mta.nyc.ny.us/lirr/. The LIRR is run by the MTA, which is located in NYC, which is a city in NY, which is located in the US. Perfect scheme, and a suprisingly decent application of DNS. Especially for government.
So why suffer with jdeli342.domain.com? Why not a.jdeli.domain.com, b.jdeli.domain.com, etc? In addition to allowing for easier delegation of services, you can set search orders in /etc/resolv.conf so you can simply type ``ssh b'' to hop from host a to host b. That's just golden.
Some other examples..
Mail Exchangers
Nameservers
Web servers
And so on. If you get to z, make the next one aa, and then ab, etc.
Also, functional names should not replace cute names. DNS allows you to assign more than one name to a machine. If a machine is repurposed for another ask, it should still be known by its unique cute name no matter where it goes. At the same time, a single host can have more than one functional name.
No reason barney.domain.com can't also be bc.web.domain.com and e.porn.domain.com. :)
A source of cute names? Oh, uhm, right now I use Roman empererors. There were tons of them.
Mary, call them all Mary (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Mary, call them all Mary (Score:3, Funny)
(sorry, couldn't resist)
Smurfs (Score:3, Funny)
One Way Naming (Score:3, Informative)
The canonical name of a machine is assigned by the person who is setting up the machine at the time a name is needed. That name stays with that machine throughout its "lifetime." More on a machine's lifetime later. The only three constraints on the name are as follows:
1. It must be something that most people can spell if they heard the name.
2. It must be a name which can be published in a newspaper without embarassing us.
3. The name may not be duplicated.
Notice that this is the canonical name for a machine. We never call one of our machines smtp or www. We alias those standard names to the canonical name.
We define a lifetime for a machine as the time from which it is named to when it has lost its essence. In turn, we define a machine's essence as that which fundamentally separates it from other machines. In our current business, a machine's essence almost always is defined as the machine's purpose in life, which typically includes its OS and the servers running on the machine. There are times where we have converted a machine from Linux to OpenBSD, for example, but kept the name. If the machine is retasked, then it usually gets a fresh OS and new name; the old machine "dies" and a new machine is "born."
That name is added to a database via a record which also contains the machine's hardware configuration, its MAC address, the OS, its maintainer's email address, and its intended purposes in life (smtp, http, file server, compute server, etc.). From that point on, it is the responsibility of the maintainer to update that record. The hostname is considered the database key, and is therefore not supposed to change.
Every six months, however, clean out the database, looking for cruft and abandoned machines. We also try to identify machines that didn't make it into the database and add them. This also provides a quick way to inventory our equipment, since we primarly own computers and network gear.