Server Naming Conventions?

Some random reader sent in: "Hi, I'm wondering what others out there use for server naming conventions. Our data centre right now houses a little under 200 servers, with plans to grow up to 4000 servers within the next five years. We'd like to pick something flexible and easy to manage with any tracking system. The servers we'll be implementing include SUN, HPUX, and AIX servers, in addition to existing Compaq and HP Intel servers, so we'll have to adhere to limitations placed on hostnames by manufacturers (ie HPUX lets you have an 8 character hostname)." We had a similar story a few years ago.

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."

Comments

the ways I've seen it done..

[Xzzy]

First job of mine was with a national hosting firm, so they made a naming scheme that reflected geography, client, and series. For example:

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.

Namespaces matter

[iamsure]

Consider the namespace.

With 8 characters, you have over 20 million possibilities.. However, realistically memorable phrases under 8 characters is considerably less. Further, ones that fit a theme even more so..

Find a fiction element (movie, tv show, book, musician, songs, etc), and use character or element names from it.

Examples that easily scale to 4000 devices:

- Star wars: At an ISP I worked at, we used Star Wars. All Windows machines were named after elements from the Empire (of course), and all unixy systems were from the Rebels. Destroyer, AT-AT, Yoda, Obi, Dagobah, etc. There are literally tens of thousands of elements in the Star Wars universe to choose from.

- The Simpsons: At an unnamed enterprise class wireless provider, this is the de-facto naming convention. It truly has a limitless number of elements, with element combinations like lisassax (lisa's sax). Couple that with phrases "haveacow", and events "shotbrns"..

- Books by Stephen King: There just isnt a more prolific, and well known horror writer. Again, the elements make the naming convention robust.

As to your idea of including the function of the device, consider:

- Easier for bad guys to target which systems to attack
- New recruits will STILL have the learning curve (ns is obviously name serving, and db is obviously database, but who would guess that ae is auth database because ad was taken by active directory!!)
- Learning what each server is/does is BETTER for new admins anyways. Jumping in is not always a great thing, and having a solid memory connection to a server is DEEPLY helpful.

These are just based on my experience after 5 years in the industry. Personally, I name computers based on Piers Anthony's "Incarnations Of Immortality" although it wouldnt scale to 4000 elements.

There is something indescribably cool about being [root@evil root]#

Re:Mary, call them all Mary

[shadow303]

What about ProudMaryKeepOnBurning ?