Server naming schemes?

[Albion]

I was just wondering if anyone else uses any unique server/workstation naming schemes instead of the old bland "Mail_server_1" "SQL_Server_4", etc...

Personally all my primary servers are named after Star Wars Planets (i.e. Coruscant, Hoth, Tatooine). Secondary servers are named after Star Wars Moons (I.e. endor, Yavin 1, Lok). I used to name the workstations after characters in the movies (Han_Solo, Luke_Skywalker, etc...) but my users started requesting certain names so I had to put the kibosh to that.

Anyone else?

-Al

 

[jimoo]

I like your naming convention better than many I have seen.

1. I don't like underscores or dashes because eventually somenone mistypes one for the other and then you end up with one or more servers that don't follow the convention, and of course it pimps you when you try to reference it.

2. Do not name them based on a Department, Building, Floor Number, etc. I have seen that in the past then office merger, change buildings, etc. That gets confusing.

3. Avoid naming it based on its purpose because that can change too.



Jim Osieczonek
Delta Business Group, LLC

http://www.deltabg.com

 

[jen89]

I've seen superheros, and Jetsons characters (Elroy, Jane, etc.)

 

[unixtechie]

A standard for large companies is to name them like, a123, a124, etc.

Also, a hostname of 'a123' is less of a target than say 'superman'.

 

[MDXer]

First company I worked at was named after Lewis Carrol (sp) characters.

ALice
Chesirecat
Tweedledee (Tech support guy #1)
TweedleDum (Tech Support guy #2 and he lived up to the name)
hooka
snark


A friend works at a company where parts of the office are named after worl regions Europe, Asia etc and the machines are all named after capital cities.

--Paul

"Shoot Me! Shoot Me NOW!!!"
- Daffy Duck

 

[lespaul]

I wish we had cool server names! We have:

MetroNT4
MetroNT5
etc.

BORING!!!

Leslie

 

[sleipnir214]

I've used the names of stars and the names of moons.

My college named servers armagnac, cognac, etc.

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[LFCfan]

We've gone for the curry theme - BHUNA, PAKORA, KULFI, SAMOSA... yum!

 

[jrbarnett]

Hi,

At one employer, servers were named after UK cities.
Domain controller was London, Netware box was Edinburgh, Linux box was Aberystwyth.
Workstations were named after counties.

At Uni, the solaris workstations were named after star systems, so there was rigel, betelgeuse, etc.

At another former employer, Unix servers were named after artists; the Novell naming convention was:
S_<deptname><index> - servers supporting a particular department. Index was a numeric identifier in case of multiple servers for a particular department. New servers would just increment this number rather than replace an old server with the old number.

Q_<printertype>_<room> - Printer queue. type would be something like HPLJ5M and room no. was where it was located.
PS_<printertype>_<room> - print server for the queue.
NDPS_<printertype>_<room> - NDPS printers.

John

 

[Salem]

This article offers some good advice on what (and what not) to call your machines

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

--

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

 

[hjgoldstein]

We used to call servers by cool (well we thought so) names like Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo etc.

Then an anally retentive internal auditor reported to head office.

Now we're stuck woth MetaframeB1, MetaframeT2 etc.

How boring is that?

 

[skotman]

Where I used to work we had servers named after greek letters. Alpha, Omega, Tau etc. Then we had one server which had been there from the begining called Brutus. Dont ask me where that came from.

Another place named them WWW1 WWW2 Mail pretty basic, the other department we merged into had simpsons names. That was funny because Homer always have problems, and Mr. burns always hogged the bandwidth like the miser he is.

I have mine at home named after Disney charecters. My web server being Mickey as it was my 1st, Mail being Goofy, because it's really strange some times and my laptop is taz. ok Taz is WB but I had to change it because of where I worked.

Scott Heath

http://www.scottspad.com

AIM: orange7288

 

[bdreed35]

My last job used a wide array of names. Somner servers were named after South Pasrk characters; One was named Kenny, and of course, it used to crash once a week. They also used Greek names: Daedalus, Icarus, Morpheus, etc. After a while, they went to a naming convention that used the primary purpose of the box in the name: Web_Server_Test, Web_Server_Prod, etc. As boring as this was, you always know what each box was for.

At my current job, we use the a prefix that denotes the location, followed by a hyphen, and then the primary purpoe of the box ie. usphx-slqddb would stand for US Phoenix SQL Server Development Database.

~Brian

 

[dkediger]

In a corporate setting, you also need to be aware of what is visible to the outside world - both from an image standpoint and as unixtechie pointed out, a target standpoint.

 

[philote]

I work at a small Anheuser-Busch wholesaler and when I started here all the names were sta01, sta02... I renamed them all when I installed Windows XP to beer brands that we distribute: budweiser, bud-ice, natural-ice, busch, etc. The laptops on our network are the light beers of course.

This will hold until we grow too big. I'm already getting close to running out of names I can use with this scheme.

 

[TheVampire]

Our servers are named after the schools in the ACC college conference. Deacon, Wolfpack, BlueDevil, Tarheel, Clemson, etc...

My old ISP ( before it was sucked up by earthlink ), named it's servers after WW2 aircraft carriers. They wanted a suggestion on what to name the new server that was in charge of filtering newsgroups and web pages for offensive content. I told them they should name it WASP of course!

Robert

 

[willir]

My take

For smallish sites and companies, use of colloquial names is common and fun. In past lives, for example, just about every company has a Testerosa server. Tolkein and Marvel comic heros are common too.

For large corporation sites, not possible. Server names have to be reasonable short (for scripting), and informative. Site name + server type + server function + server number is fairly typical...

NYCNTPX01 - New York (US), NT, Proxy, number 01
HOU2KNT01 - Houston (US), Windows 2000, Lotus Notes, number 01
TORNVFS01 - Toronto (CA), Novell, file server, 01
LLANVFS02 - Llanelli (UK), Novell, file server, 02

There are several reasons for this...
- Group servers by site for monitoring
- Quickly determine server OS and purpose
- Scripts can be used to make use of fixed field length to copy files / document specs / prevenative maintenance. For example reboot all Notes servers on Sunday at 1AM.

Sorry for being so dull with the names but where some business have 100's and perhaps 1,000's of servers, FRODO and HULK just dont work.

Another use of a formal naming convention is for servers in public use. Imagine a server responsible for traffic tickets or airplane bookings being called KENNY or RAMBO. Lacks in originality but also lacks in professionalism.

Small shops are more fun. But the trend seems to be that they are gobbled up by the bigger companies. Case in point, TheVampire comment before it was sucked up by earthlink.

Pet peeves in naming...
- When those &quot;powers that be&quot; change the name of a device without notification, and then do it again, and again.
- When those &quot;powers that be&quot; decide to re-name all workstations with a numeric serial number. (Note: You can not ping a number -- has to be an alphanumeric name or an IP address. Management said - &quot;So what if you loose one tool, this is what I have decided&quot; -- non technical people making technical decisions -- with 1,000's of desktops, not a cool move.)

 

[Grenage]

Well we're not quite as fun here Since I've started here all the workstations are now called &quot;CP01&quot; to &quot;CP98&quot;.

The file server is called &quot;Fileserver&quot;, the webserver is called &quot;webserver&quot;...

Oh well

 

[chiph]

Two companies ago, we used a theme of &quot;Knights of the Round Table&quot;.

So we had Arthur, Lancelot, Bedevere, Morgana, etc.

Chip H.


If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ222-2244 first

 

[Spanner76]

Our servers are boring- CompanyName1, CompanyName2, CompanyName3, etc...

The printers were called after trees, but then we started running out and I wanted a laugh, so we started using football players: Rooney, Owen, Keane...