So, how do you (or the sysadmins where you work) name your workstations and servers?
Here at work the workstations are named after birds. Mine is Kittiewake. As far as I know, no one has Thrush. And the servers are named after elements: zinc, copper etc.
I've started a naming convention at home with Discworld characters. My laptop is called Detritus, my webserver Vime etc etc.
I'm kind of boring in that way, I am all for the functionality and don't care at all about the names. In my network at home the computers simply are called "dator1", "dator2" and so on. Dator is the swedish word for computer.
At one shop where I worked there was Roxy, Doxy, Moxy, Foxy and Poxy. I can't remember which was the proxy.
There's also pantheons. Roman emperers. Mountains. City streets.
We use city streets where I work. Workstations are named for regular medium to smaller streets, development servers are named for major cross streets, and internal app servers (RT, bigtracking etc...) are named for major thoroughfairs. Windows servers are named for tollways.
Then we use alternate host names for each service, and they can point to any one of those servers, and be moved as needed.
I.e. we can have a server name madison, but it might have the aliases extranet, vpn, and jabber assigned to it. If we need to move one of those services, we just move it and change the dns records and poof, all traffic goes to a new server.
The users never see the machine name, only the service name.
Sxooter wrote:I.e. we can have a server name madison, but it might have the aliases extranet, vpn, and jabber assigned to it.
That reminds me:
...a host must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES. [RFC2100]
Anyone else here familiar with (and applies) RFCs 1178 and 2100?
Sxooter wrote:The users never see the machine name, only the service name.
I like that idea. Saves explaining things, but also confusion.
"Erm... do I connect to vpn or madison..."
At work it's pretty boring db0 - db4, web1-web12, app1-app3, mail1 & 2
At the last place I worked it was Lord of the Rings characters
At home it's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy characters
Boring as they are I quite like numbered schemes though. They make scripting a little easier for one. For example, our deployment script just runs through 1 12 rather than having to remember the name for each server.
piersk wrote:...I've started a naming convention at home with Discworld characters. My laptop is called Detritus, my webserver Vime etc etc.
Do you have your "Anthill Inside" stickers on them? 
-OUT OF CHEESE ERROR-
NogDog wrote:Do you have your "Anthill Inside" stickers on them?
No, but I'm really tempted to do that... Anyone know where I can get those little square badges custom made?
Google might --- IIRC, there's a Scottish outfit that does a good bit of that (makes the FreeBSD Beastie badges anyways, and I think for various Linuxen, etc.).
I name workstations for their user, unless it's a job that seems to have high turnover, in which case it's their location, so you might have "jim" or "bob" or "frontdesk2". Servers: might first one was at a church, so I picked "Old Testament Prophets that begin with E". Elijah, Elisha, Ezekiel ... those are the public ones. I dunno of any others, so I guess company growth is limited, heh.
Some clients have a server named their company name, obviously. Others I name as I see fit, perhaps with an eye to their function: I've got 'archangel', 'files', 'namestar' and the ever-so-quaint 'fw'.
I prefer names that are functional and convey extra meaning so domain controllers would be DC1 DC2, terminal servers TS1 TS2, fileservers FS1 FS2 etc, likewise workstations which might be named by function, location, or most often in series WS1 WS2. The downside to this is security as it becomes obvious which are the important machines to attack.
I absolutely hate people who use silly names as have been listed here - if you ever do any network support in a large WAN or MAN you'll soon realise why.
As for naming machines for their user - sheesh. The last thing you want to do is to encourage users to think that THEY own the machines. That is also why I hate MS and their silly 'My Documents'?? They are not their documents, they are the property of the organisation as are the workstations.
The biggest trick that most people signally fail to learn is to make things easy for the person coming along after you. That was the infallable test we used back in operations in the 70s to decide if a new trainee was going to make the grade.
bradgrafelman wrote:Which is done by detailed, updated network documentation (graphs, lists of names/IPs/roles, network routes, routing hardware (and its physical location), etc.).
Yes, and starting with a meaningfull name means you can go straight to the right place to look all that up.
Romeo
Whoops wrong thread - meant to post in the word association htread, me bad.
I prefer to have a canonical machine name (i.e. machine0001, whatever) that is NOT ASSOCIATED with its job. Possibly associated with its hardware or OS. I.e. EL0001 for enterprise linux machines, VM0001 for vmware boxes, win0001 for windows boxes, etc...) and then have CNames for the job(s) they do.
The idea of one box only ever having one job seems a little wasteful. And windows centric.
Context is everything. I can certainly understand the logic of your (Roger Ramjet's) postion, but it doesn't make sense for everyone. My brother has one publicly accessible server, and I laughed hard at "loc-srv-application.hisdomain.com" until I realized that he has over 150 machines inside the LAN and has DNS zones for interior and exterior use; that server overlaps zones, so it makes some sense to the managers inside the LAN. And, if I expected to fill even one class C network with machines, you can bet I wouldn't name them after princesses in Disney movies, colors of Kryptonite, or my old girlfriends.
But at the time the "silly" naming convention started, hosts were few and far between; they were often Unixen and did a "host" (pun not really intended) of different functions for lots of users (Hmm, what about the VMS guys ... I bet they used functional names, even then). Even today, if I go to a 5-seat Mom & Pop retailer in downtown County Town, Missouri where they change the carpet more frequently than the employees, it makes some sense to know which computer is used by whom; after all, the computers are named for my convenience, and not the end-user's; he/she probably wouldn't know hostname(1) from an "antivirus", even if you cat(1) it to his/her mbox. "Jim" is much easier than "3rd-ofc-frm-left-wkstn-winxp". And, if I say, "where's Jim", it doesn't matter whether I'm asking about the computer or the employee; unless Jim is at the water cooler or on a sales trip, I'll get pointed to the office where the offending workstation is located.
Perhaps I'll agree with you: tomorrow I'll rename my all-purpose miracle BSD server to "townname_fw_gw_squid_www_dns_mail_rsync_samba". That should be much easier to type as an argument to ping or ssh .... :rolleyes:
It's all about the context, especially in terms of numbers of machines and possibly related to employee turnover; as I mentioned, some places I have "counter1", "counter2", "desk1" "desk2", etc., usually because I know that people are in and out of there pretty regularly. Maybe a related question should be: how many machines can one sysadmin handle in the "old" scheme before a more "functional" (to quote Roger R) scheme is needed?
Now, for something (un?)related: how about naming conventions for wireless SSIDs?
My brother just finished a little "wardriving" for a project he's planning. In a 15-square-block area of his little city there were 103 SSID's being broadcast; as predicted by estimates, only about 50% were using any WEP/WPA, etc. Lots of interesting SSIDs - my favorite: "DontBeStealingMyWifi". I sure hope it was encrypted. 
Sxooter wrote:The idea of one box only ever having one job seems a little wasteful. And windows centric.
Well most winders boxes can only do one thing :rolleyes:
Roger Ramjet wrote:Well most winders boxes can only do one thing :rolleyes:
Crash? :eek:
LOL! I've been having trouble with this MsSQL boxen, so:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>hostname
rebootmeplx