Hostnaming Convention Best Practice 2

[dUbbsNIX]

What are peoples' views on the convetion used when naming hosts in your enterprise?
I like to use peoples names like Kylie, Deniro etc. but some boring people believe it is better to include the platform etc. e.g ABCUNIX22 If the company was called ABC and the machine was the 22nd UNIX machine installed.

Surley there are security implications with the latter convention, and it's better to stick with fun names.

What are your thoughts? I'd like a white paper or something ideally so I can fight my case to keep with the fun names!!

thanks,

Dubbs. UNIX SA.

 

[Grenage]

Well fun names are easier to remember, we don't use them here because we dont have too many.

If you are relying on system names for computer specs you are doing something wrong so no reason to do the above.

When it comes to workstations however we use standard workstation names (WKS1, WKS2, WKS3 etc).

 

[dUbbsNIX]

Many thanks for this. Your easier to remember point, is good one. Hostnames' main purpose is to turn an ip address into something memorable for humans. By using the proposed new naming convention i.e. <companyname><Platform><xx> just means we still have to try and remember numbers!!!

I still believe that there are security implications, we would not put references to the OS in login prompts so why put them in the hostname!!!

Anyone else have views or know where I can get published documentation on the issue?

thanks again for your fast response.

 

[Grenage]

No Problem

You can usually get a computers OS version etc with a simple network scanner so it's not really a problem.

Like you say, all that really matters is that you can remember it.

 

[Salem]

I remembered this guide from long ago (took some finding 2nd time around though)

http://www.ualberta.ca/CNS/net-ops/naming.html

 

[wbg34]

I've always gone with the easy to remember names for servers, but for workstations I try to use their names to remind me where it is located in the company. All of our workstations that are used by office personnel have O for the first character in their name. Our Engineering staff have E, and our plant workstations have PL etc.... It makes it easier for me to find a computer that is having problems.

 

[dUbbsNIX]

Many Many thanks to Salem, the article by Don Libes (Didn't he write Expect?) was spot on.

thanks to everyone for their help.

Dubbs.

 

[chiph]

At my last job we used the &quot;King Arthur&quot; theme for naming our AS/400s. Arthur, Lancelot, Galahad, etc. We skipped Guenevere as no one could ever spell it.

Chip H.