No more hiding in the server room
What naming conventions do you use for your equipment?
What do you name your servers, desktops, etc?
In the past we named our servers after characters from MST3K but as we acquired more and more servers we ran out of “good” names. Plus it was kind of awkward when the names came during conversations with people outside of IT. Once I got some flak from one of our execs because the exec felt that the name “princeofspace” was unprofessional. The biggest issue was that the names didn’t mean anything; if you have a server named diabolik then what does that tell you about the box? Nothing, that’s what.
So now we name our serves after site/building code then function then internal server number. So for instance our 15th windows terminal server at our 3rd building in Santa Fe would be SAF03MSTS15. SAF03 being the site/building number, MSTS being MicroSoft Terminal Server and 15 meaning that this is the 15th TS box. We use this system for everything now … servers, storage, network gear … everything.
But I don’t feel that this is the best possible system and I’m interested in what other people are doing. What are you naming your equipment?
In the past we named our servers after characters from MST3K but as we acquired more and more servers we ran out of “good” names. Plus it was kind of awkward when the names came during conversations with people outside of IT. Once I got some flak from one of our execs because the exec felt that the name “princeofspace” was unprofessional. The biggest issue was that the names didn’t mean anything; if you have a server named diabolik then what does that tell you about the box? Nothing, that’s what.
So now we name our serves after site/building code then function then internal server number. So for instance our 15th windows terminal server at our 3rd building in Santa Fe would be SAF03MSTS15. SAF03 being the site/building number, MSTS being MicroSoft Terminal Server and 15 meaning that this is the 15th TS box. We use this system for everything now … servers, storage, network gear … everything.
But I don’t feel that this is the best possible system and I’m interested in what other people are doing. What are you naming your equipment?
Views: 275
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Paul Rouse on -
We use a similar model to that which you mentioned - a combination of location and function and instance number. There are arguments for not naming a box by function as it immediately identifies it's role to any potential bad guy but everyone has their own opinion.
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Permalink Reply by Isaac on -
Thanks for your reply. Glad to see I’m not the only person using this scheme.
The other thing against the “functional” based arrangement that it sounds like you and I are using it doesn’t work well if your servers have multiple roles … you don’t want to name your box “fileserver” if it is a fileserver but also like 10 other things as well.
I’m not too concerned about security implications of naming anymore (although I used to be) because I feel that anyone that is really interested in my machines will just run a service scanner on them to figure out what I’m running anyway. It’s the same reason I don’t bother to change the banner on our MTAs anymore either.
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Permalink Reply by Marc Dekeyser on
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Work related will most often be a functionall description. Similar to the one you mention. At home I name everything after cakes... F.e. Banana.cake, Marble.cake, ...
No I'm not obsessed with cakes... Well, maybe a little :)
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Permalink Reply by Rodd Young on
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Hi All,
This being my first post on the site go easy on me....
We break our server/infrastructure names into 3 parts
ie VMDSS01:
VM indicates that it is Virtual Infrastructure
DSS - Domain Support Services (DNS DHCP etc)
01 - 1st server Commissioned (GC)
or if it's a Physical Machine
ie PHBKP09
PH indicates a Physical peice of equipment
BKP - Backup Services
09 - Commissioning date, so we know when the 3yr life cycle is due for replacement.
Works for us unway.
Cheers
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Permalink Reply by Matt Simmons on -
Interesting! I haven't seen schemes that differentiate between physical and virtual machines. Do you provide any aliases, at all, so if you transition a physical machine into a virtual machine, functionality isn't lost by hostname changes?
Also, I love the idea of a commissioning date at an easy glance. Cool idea!
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Permalink Reply by Rodd Young on
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We havn't had a need to add aliases in dns as yet, although we have done some P2V and then hosted them on another VMWare Server. It was only our old financial systems, so all we did was update the shortcuts on the network to point to the new server so it wasn't a big issue.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Ramm on -
My workstations take a similar approach. My laptops name is '200601CHE-MR-XL'.
200601 = Bought in January 2006 (Cool time for a new one!)
CHE = location (City Hall East end for mine)
MR = My initials
X = XP
L = Laptop
I have no cool convention for my servers, unfortunately.
Michael
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Permalink Reply by Wesley "Nonapeptide" on
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Don't worry... we wait until at least the third post to flame people. =)
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Permalink Reply by Matt Simmons on
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I liked this question so much, I submitted story to Slashdot about it. There are lots of interesting answers in that thread.
As for myself, I use a pretty simple scheme.
The ideal one in my head was:
datacenter-usage##
We've got two datacenters, alpha (the primary) and beta (the secondary). The 2nd file server at beta would be
b-fs2
That's for servers.
My laptops all used to be Dells. Originally we named them after the favorite liquor of the user. Now we're a little more boring, and I name each machine for its Dell service tag number. Recently, though, we've been getting some Lenovos that don't have service tags. In lieu of the service tags, the desktops are named after the MAC address. This has features and drawbacks. The primary feature is that I can ask the name of their computer and immediately discover which port on the switch it's connected to. The draw back is that most people get confused about their computer names.
Never easy solutions...
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Permalink Reply by Rodd Young on
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Hi Matt,
For Desktops and Laptops we used to use the Dell Service tags numbers for ease of auditing( we now have software for this). More recently though we have gone to a Positional Machine Name. ie FINICTSA
First 3 letters is the Directoratethe staff member works for (in this case Finance)
Next 3 Letter Department (ICT - Information Communication Systems)
Last Characters is the Position (SA - Sytems Administrator)
We also keep the machine names to a max of 8 characters
Easier for the staff to remember their computer names and when we talk to the person on the phone we pretty much know which machine to connect to, to provide remote assistance.
Again this works well in our environment but may not suite others
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Permalink Reply by Paul Kroon on -
At my work, we go for a simple first name initial and last name for user workstations, but for servers we use Marvel comic characters. I get to browse the Marvel Universe wiki anytime we need to bring in a new server. That convention has hundreds of good names, and I can come up with a super power, alter ego, or other characteristic to match the purpose of the server. I have come to prefer this over the functional names because when you get up to 10-20 or more servers that have the same services, it gets hard to remember exactly what each one in particular does, but I never have trouble remembering that Beast and Colossus are our ESX servers and Rogue is a Linux web server. Plus, the end users love when they realize they're logging into the Punisher terminal server.
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Permalink Reply by Rodd Young on
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Much better than a previuos place I worked at where they named them after fish like mullet, schnapper and whitting
As you can guess he was a mad keen fisherman. More recently (thank god) they started naming them after Star Wars characters...now that's more like it.
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