Tips for Naming Computers | Hacker News Reader

Tips for Naming Computers

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13 pointsoskarth10 comments

At my last job, the infrastructure guys were wild for virtualisation. All the actual physical servers were just hosts for VMs, which did actual work. VMs were created for some need, and destroyed if that need was no longer felt. Therefore, no machine ever changed purpose: physical machines were only VM hosts, and virtual machines were destroyed rather than reused.

As a result, we were able to name machines after their functions without running into the traditional problems that stem from that. Sadly, this left us with a terrifically dull naming system: physical machines were kvm-001, kvm-002, etc, and VMs were fooapp-001, fooproxy-001, foodb-001, etc.

I guess if you're running 5 servers and each one has 4 functions, more "interesting" naming schemes can work. But once you're dealing with more than a few machines, functional names are necessary. When I see a machine's name in the logs, I really don't want to have to infer the machine's function by remembering whether "Zapdos" is a pokemon or a character from Star Wars. I want a name like "dc1-cluster5-rendernode057" that tells me what the machine does and/or where it sits on the network.

Even with physical machines: if the function changes, the correct thing to do is re-name and re-image it, and not worry about the fact that the physical box is the same. Your physical maintenance records should be keyed by something like asset tag anyway.

I like to choose computer names after pokémons. The names usually are simple, it's easy to follow some general rule to give names (get the last 9 bits from MAC Address, add 1 and check which pokémon have this National Dex number), you can choose wallpaper colors related with the pokémon color, there's a lot of pokémons to prevent name collisions and new pokémon games which present new pokémons are introduced faster than you have need for new names.

I also do the Pokemon naming scheme, but I've never considered that they get released faster than I add servers.

At one company I worked at we named the two border routers after two hot girls from Sales.

Not sure it's a best practice though.

We're talking about computer names here which is admittedly a very nerdy topic but can we do so without descending to this level? You may find that funny, but it merely contributes to the stereotype of technical folk as basement-dwelling closet cases.

Even if you are so insensitive to not recognize how disrespectful this is, you should at least be able to appreciate that it is a legal risk.

If I were to discover any such juvenile shenanigans in my group it would be grounds for immediate termination.

Sure, just like impersonations of your boss are ill-advised. But funny to a certain at of people (your boss probably not being a member of that set).

I suspect you haven't said anything he doesn't know.

Since nobody's already mentioned it: http://namingschemes.com/

One solution which tends to obey all of these rules is to choose the names of people from some common category, such as famous mathematicians.

Philosophers work well too: leibniz, spinoza, kant, russell, quine, nietzsche.

At various times I have used European capitals, characters from Futurama, characters from Dr Who (although everyone fought over who got 'k9').

Naming machines can be a lot of fun, and helps building a friendly organizational culture. It also ascribes some personality to what would otherwise be a deployment of 'lobotomized Unices.'

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