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Server Names For a New Generation
itwbennett writes "Server naming is well-trod ground on Slashdot. But as new generations enter the workforce, they're relearning the fundamentals of what makes a good scheme. Can servers named after characters from The Simpsons or The Howard Stern show stand the test of time? If you name your servers after the Seven Dwarfs, can you have any doubt that Grumpy will cause you trouble? Striking a balance between fun and functional is harder than it seems."
from the tempting-fate dept.
Indeed. After years of enduring networks with servers with tree names or GI Joe character names, when it came for me to come up with names for my servers and other network devices, I came up with functional names that describe physical locations, departments, functions, and so forth. That way I have a descriptive network rather than trying to remember which one of the Power Rangers the last IT guy liked the best.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Or you could name them after Linux distro's those are almost infinite to.
It originated from a long forgotten time when I can't get laid.
Too bad your freudian slip of mixing past and present tense gave you away.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
Yeah, that's actually a bit of a problem. Canadians really need to get a little more creative in naming their daughters.
Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
There can be a naming standard that is applied to all devices, network, servers, storage, so on, that help simplify how an IT organization works. This has to be driven by management.
Naming things by some arbitrary set of characters from your favorite story does not scale well, to say the least.
Lets create a standard that scales like a mofo:
ie, SJN1FIDBSW0001 ,logical identifer (0), physical device # (001)
The goal would be to have each device identified by a location (SJN), location code (1), businessorg (FI), zone (DB) device type (SW),
The problem with that naming convention is you get very similar named servers, which might only differ by a single character in the middle of a hard-to-scan blob of text.
On colleague of mine has managed to flatten a production oracle server because he connected to the Manchester one, not the Washington one. The difference was embedded in the middle of the all-caps dns. Several people have restarted services on the wrong server too, again a single character difference in 15.
Since then I've instituted a policy of changing PS1 to prepend the hostname with the location in plain text.
When it comes to outside addressing, heigherarchial dns and cnames allow easy addressing. oracle1.washington.mycorp.com, web1.gaza.mycorp.com is fairly clear where the box is and what the function is, and when it comes time to reassign functions, you just update the cname.
Can't believe noone mentioned this: picking a good server name is important.
I joined a company with over 500 servers and a really incoherent naming scheme - or lack of. I could talk for hours on how you built a name out of a class hiearachy which also matched its class in puppet, but the dual naming them was a win. Basically it works like this:
When servers are racked up, they're just numbered, with a TLA for the location they're in based on nearest airport code.
lax-001
lax-002
lax-003
That name is PERMANENT unless it gets shipped to a new location. It also gets assigned an IP right away. But so far a bit meaningless. then it gets assigned a function
foo-web-01 CNAME lax-002
mail-02 CNAME lax-003
bar-db-06 CNAME lax-004
This has a couple of huge advantages, namely:
1. When a guy in the datacentre asks you for label names to rack them up, you just say "just number them 45-67", and they get on with it before you've even assigned them.
2. No re-labelling
3. You can look up the "meaningless" name just using DNS
4. You have a numbered inventory
5. With a bit of work, you can pre-assign IP addresses to servers before they've even turned up and get the network guys to tag them straight in to the switch on arrival
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
He's got 99999 problems but a server name ain't one.
UTF-8: There and Back Again