Best DNS Naming Scheme For Small/Medium Businesses?
Bandman writes "My business just purchased a couple dozen blades, and with our existing servers, this brings us to around 60 machines. We're geographically dispersed, and most of the users who need to connect to servers are not technical (if that matters).
We used to use theme-based naming schemes, but we've been migrating to a more utilitarian system. I think it's clearer and more concise, but I've had some feedback from users who didn't find it understandable.
What do you use for your internal DNS schemes? How big is your network, and what do you recommend for future expansion? Does it matter to your users at all?"
The guys at work seem to enjoy their time with Jenna quite a bit.
Body parts. Easy to remember.
"Where is that file?"
"In the nose."
...therefore all my servers are given a hostname string equal to the Dell "Service Tag", followed by a dash, followed by the Dell "Express Service Code".
I really love my junior admins, and whoever the poor schmuck is that will take my place as senior sysadmin once I'm gone from here.
What we do is use a series of numbers separated by periods to designate a hierarchy. For example, the servers in the company all share the first number, say 192. Then, each department has its own number, say 168, giving us 192.168. Then, each location in the department has a number, such as 204, taking us to 192.168.204. Then we give each server a unique number, like 10, bringing us up to 192.168.204.10. It's very easy for me to recognize where a machine is by that address. We try to keep the numbers under 255 to make them easier to remember, and it's really not many more digits that a long distance code and phone number.
what goes after Server0003?
...
How about using an SHA-1 hash of an incrementing counter? The first box is 356a192b7913b04c54574d18c28d46e6395428ab.company.internal, the second one is da4b9237bacccdf19c0760cab7aec4a8359010b0.company.internal etc. The mapping between counter values and machines is stored in an Excel spreadsheet, printed out and stored in the server room.
That way you get a unique naming scheme that's both logical, understandable (you can convert the host name into its counter value through a simple rainbow table) and reasonably safe from hash collisions.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)