What names to you give your servers?

[Vogra]

My server have names with identification of Company, Estate, System type, Numeric (or not)- like this:
vsurjux09[Valesul (vsu), Rio de Janeiro (rj), UX(ux), 09];
vsurjex03 [Valesul, Rio de Janeiro, Exchange (ex), 03];
vsuspbi01 [Valesul, S?o Paulo (sp), Business Inteligence (bi)].

[Dan Zucker]

Here's my 2 cents.

We have less than 200 servers and they are spread over 6 segements. The segments are 127-development
57, 20, 148, 10-production, 250-client company. Each machine is called misnnn, where nnn is the IP address of the machine. This gives me no connection to wheather production, development, test, or client, but I can put my web-consoles on segment 5 with the same number as the server, and when I finally get 2 comm cards per machine, I will be able to make a backup segment seperate from my normal segment, but with the same numbers and names.

This gives me a name and the webconsole is easily accessed.

With all the drawbacks, it works fine for us.

[Dave Wherry]

It seems the trends in names often hinges on the number of servers you have. Just a few makes it easy to associate a whimsical name to a server. If you have a large number it seems easier to use a covention based on location, function, type or some combination.

Years ago I was in a shop with 1 mini computer. I can't remember the name. It was replaced with 2 new systems. Keeping it short and simple, the first was named Hal. It had the legacy environment. I could never get that system to open the pod doors for me. The slightly more powerful system for a new environment was named Sal.

As I moved on to other shops we had location and server number. I liked the location part of the name in a distributed environment.

Another was application and environment like Prod1, Prod2 ... We later fine tuned it with a more generic name for the systems and used application/environment names within DNS. It makes it easy to move an application from one system to another. The users really do not need to know or even care what system their application is on. If they want to get to the financial database the DB SID may be something like "fin-db". If we move that database to another system we just make a change in DNS and everyone follows the move automatically. No user retraining.

In my current shop we are using planets and other celestial objects. As some one else mentioned, Uranus has been ruled out. Jupiter, the largest planet, is our production database server. Mars, the angry planet is the development server. Other than those 2 there is not much rational that I can see. They were assigned before I got here.

We installed a new server last year and the keeper of the list gave me Apus. No one knew what it was so I did a web search and found it is a constellation. However, most of the hits that came up on the search were for Apu's Quickie-Mart from the Simpson's. We may be mixing our convention.

On the NT side of the house they have named the systems after bands or musicians. The only one they put much thought into is a server that is about 3 years old named Clapton. Their rational, which I do not agree with, is it used to be great. Now it sucks.

[Kenneth Platz]

A few years ago I was working as a systems administrator in a shop with 500+ workstations and servers, and we gave them names along several different themes.

First we started out with names from Star Trek: picard, kirk, riker, ds9, worf, etc...

All of our printers and print servers we named after various car types, simply because the print server manager was a car buff, so we had names like ford, chevy, edsel, porsche, etc...

Then we ran out of Star Trek names but had a group of about 10 developers who needed names for their machines. So one of us decided on happy, grumpy, dopey, doc, grumpy, sleepy, sneezy, snowhite, witch, and mirror.

Then we had even more machines which came in, and we continued with the Disney theme, running through the different Disney movies.

Then we went to a Babylon 5 theme - sheridan, ivanova, bester, franklin, etc

And so on and so forth. Personally, I found it to be far more interesting and lively than choosing names based solely on an IP address or the user's name.

[Pedro Sousa]

Hi Tracey!
I use names like 'PORUxxxx', where POR is for Portugal, U for Unix, and xxxx is a number identifying the system and area of production.
I also used names like Bravo, Manso, etc. like military names :). But I gave up using those.

regards.

[Rob Mallard]

I started with the logical approach like
fs### - File Servers, last octet of IP Address
ms### - Mail servers, last octet of IP Address
ws### - Web servers, last octet of IP Address

I just found it too boring, I also tried planets and moons and liked that a lot, but too many other people were doing that and I wanted to be more unique. So I changed to names of sub-atomic particles, like quark, lepton, muon, tau, etc. There are literally hundreds if you dig deep enough and use older variations.

A small listing is available at:

http://www.bartleby.com/61/charts/A4partic.html

I like this system since it is unique and eclectic. The names are usually short, and easy to remember and pronounce once you get used to them.

[Steffi Jones_1]

Hi Tracey,

we have some of our boxes in the lab (for crash and burn) named after beer brands.

But don't tell anybody I let you in on this little hp-secret :-)

But on a serious note:
A pattern to have is good for any future additions and any changes in the environment and/or staffing.
For hackers ... yes they would easier guess what the system is used for and could do more damage, but how many times does that really happen?

Take care,

Steffi Jones

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

Hi
Do you not think that some server names indicate just how weird unix sysadmins are???

On the security front as many have said NEVER give a serve a name that indicates what is is and what it does "Nmain" screans N class therefore HPUX and main server - Ripe for attack.
Inverse logic may be used "Ztemp" indicates a low level server used for tempory bits.

Some of my servers are named after puppets from "Thunderbirds" (British TV) and are "Brains", "Parker" and "Virgil" - These are in house so giving the names away is not unsafe.

Just my 2 cents worth

;-)

Paula

[Sachin Patel]

Hi
We have 50+ server we have named big server like V,N,K and J Class on Mathematician or Scientist. Small servers and workstations are name from star-tek and wine. Dual head and triple heads are twoeye and threeeye and foureye etc... We even have twin brother?s name for our cluster systems. We have Star name for our firewall and so on and on.....
It is fun having different name.

Sachin

[John Waller]

Tracey,

We go through various stages. Initially our internal development machines were named after characters from the UK TV series Blake 7 (blake , avon, jenna, zen, cally, soolin etc). We then started to supply 2 node ServiceGuard clusters to customers so we moved to famour duos,
bill & ben, laurel & hardy, donald & daisy, mickey & pluto,
punch & judy. mulder & scully
We have now moved our internal servers to other TV Female charaters like xena , buffy, sabrina (yes we are a male orientated department)
I suppose rock group, or male action hero's might be your answer

[Evert Jan van Ramselaar]

Hi,

We maintain some servers for a liquor wholesale company. They gave their servers liquor brandnames, like 'campari' and 'sambuca'.

[Peter Lundquist_1]

I used to work on a U.S. Army contract quite a few years ago. We named our systems after characters in the M*A*S*H movie/TV series, which seemed appropriate. Hawkeye, Trapper, Radar, Burns, Potter, etc. But our favorite was Hotlips. And our customers loved it!

[John Bolene]

We use a naming convention such as

CCFFFNNN

CC = location or country code, (if US, then data center name such as dc, rc), otherwise ir, jp, cn, etc
FFF = function, xts = x term server, dfs = data file server, dns = dns server, dce = dce server
NNN = number starting at 001

at home I only have one and it is called rockets for my passionate hobby

[Jim Turner]

Boring, boring, boring: HPUX01, HPUX02, HPUX03, etc.

I've always wished for something with a little more pizzazz. The non-production machines under my control have names with a little more appeal: Neelix, Cannes, etc.

[Nick Wickens]

I was labeled as un-professional by my manager for calling my brocade switches "piglet" and "Eeyore" and my san controller "tigger". However later on we had many problems with the SAN controller (it was an LSI metastor) and the replacement was appropriatly named "pooh".

My favorite was a Novell server from 15 years ago that was called the "silver server" ... Silver Surfer ..?? yes .. no ? oh well I thought it was fun.

[Jeffrey S. Sims]

i like to name them based on a personality that I envision for the machine. Example:

Two firewalls (which should be tough) are Conan and Hercules

[Martin Johnson]

Our naming convention:

aaabbnnn

where aaa =

prd = production
dev = development
ttf = tech test/sandbox
vrf = verification/QA

where bb =

ux = HPUX
ai = AIX
sx = Solaris

where nnn = a number from 001 to 999

Therefore, the node name gives an indication of importance ( prd vs ttf) and what OS (ux vs ai).

Marty

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Tracy,

You can use walt dishney characters, mickey / donald / pluto etc. Or you can use the name of the birds. Another naming convention could be the localtion, type of the server and the no,
location/sun|hp/number

Hope this helps.

Regds

[Pete Randall]

An amusing old thread brought back from the brink.

Years ago, before downsizing, we had named our mainframe systems Sire (development), Dam (production), and Udder (administrator's sandbox). If you haven't guessed, we're a dairy registry organization.

When we first started the downsizing effort we hired HP to come in, set up the first few boxes, and do initial HP-UX training. For unknown reasons, the servers were named after Canadian provinces and the workstations were named after US state capitals.

I'm sad to report that we're still using provinces - someday I hope to switch back to Sire and Dam. I won't worry about the workstations but it used to be a lot more fun for the operations folk to get on the PA and announce that "the Dam system will be coming down in 5 minutes".

Pete

[Robert Gamble]

Naming Standard used in a 10,000+ node environment:

CCSSSFNN

where
CC=City Code
SSS=Site Code
F=Function Code
NN=Number [00-ZZ]

example: nywtcwb2 represents a webserver server in NYC at the World Trade Center, number b2.

Multi-homed interfaces had a different standard, but had most of the orignal hostname inside it.

[Dave La Mar]

Our hierarchy decided on Gumby character names.
In the past I saw the wisdom of using practical application names in the naming, but as others have noted, this is also informative for the "hacker".

dl

[John Payne_2]

We used to use names in the Star Trek/Star Wars universes. At some point, somebody somewhere got upset at us. (I think an applications guy.) Then we moved to US Naval ship names. We pulled a list of about 1500 ship names that were 8 characters or less. No one yet has gotten upset at us for this.

It is nice, because if someone is being a real pain about getting their server ordered and installed, I just go to the list and find the name that is either the hardest to pronouce or the hardest to spell. Otherwise, I pick the name that suits my fancy...

Hope it helps

John

[Bill Hassell]

Here in the North American Response Center, we have some 250 workstations and servers that are used to duplicate problems for customers. Naming was up to each team and needless to say, they are all very colorful. Names like jake and ellwood, bambam and pebbles, lancelot and camelot, and so on.

Our IT department tries (about every 2 years, somehow matching upper management turnover) to get us to rename them to names that look wonderful on a spreadsheet: e3109083 or n27f4wrt, etc. Because these are test and problem replication machines, I have defended the need to eliminate confusion over these machines by retaining these creative names. And they go back to their caves for another 2 dozen months.

HOWEVER, the personification of machines has a very significant advantage: people remember these names, regardless of what changes in applications may have occurred. They easily confuse spreadsheet names and wrong machines get rebooted, even reloaded because some digits were reversed or mistyped. I have seen racks of servers with 3 or 4 names pasted on various parts, each a funky derivative of the other names. Usually, different departments (networking, server management, development, DBAs) all have their pet way to name the machines, trying some form of XXXX1 XXXX2 and so on.

So from the point of view of reliability, meaningless nonsense names such as w5ett67 or hp1765op should prohibited, and theme names should be the rule. We have machines that are some 10 years old and everyone knows where lancelot is located. Reliability overrides all beancounter rules.

[Steven Sim Kok Leong]

Hi,

Well, there are company policies (my company at least) on the DNS names or hostnames that can be used for our servers.

The restrictions (off my head) include but are not limited to the following:
1) must be non-political
2) must be non-religious
3) must be non-racist
3) must be non-personal (an object noun, not subjective thus usually non-verb)
4) must not be a vulgarity
... and so forth.

We used birds of prey for one cluster of servers and we had actually one user who went to check the dictionary and complained on one of the hostnames because one of the multifaceted meanings of it had meant laziness.

We also had singapore-unique dedicacies for some clusters etc. I think it really depends on the company's policy.

I have yet to come across a cluster of servers named after a list of 4-lettered vulgarities though. Can imagine it to be very sickening to login to XXXX server. ;-)

Hope this helps. Regards.

Steven Sim Kok Leong

[Tim D Fulford]

Hi

We used to have a convention of sorts that machines in a cluster, or part of a group would get similar names.

cowboy & indian
tequila & smabucca
peaches & cream

Sometimes the name vaguely induicated what the server was "reptile" was a reporting server.

On that note it did get confusing if there were 100's (which there were) of computers because some people wanted the same or similar names...

Any way this is waht we did

Tim