

The Coolest Server Names - Recently undeleted - akent
http://serverfault.com/questions/45734

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davidu
The people who argue against naming machines in an automated fashion don't
have hundreds or thousands to manage.

We do something simple: class of machine + number . city.

    
    
      m1.sjc1 == generic machine in san jose
      m2.sjc1 == another generic machine in san jose
      db1.ams1 == database class machine in amsterdam
      ops1.chi1 == ops class machine in chicago
    

Very scalable and easy to manage. Custom names are annoying. Your machine
management system can tell you what function they serve.

~~~
ubernostrum
_The people who argue against naming machines in an automated fashion don't
have hundreds or thousands to manage._

The people who argue that their use case -- regardless of whether it's ten
machines or ten thousand machines -- can be generalized into something
everyone has to do are the people I try to avoid arguing with.

~~~
davidu
Right, which is why I didn't do that (unlike the entire point of the URL in
the OP, which does that).

I just said that those groups of people don't have hundreds or thousands of
machines to manage if they can maintain a custom naming scheme. I didn't say
everyone has to do that. All my personal servers are few-lettered women's
names. Laura, Amy, Mary, Sara, Christy, etc. To each, their own.

So please don't troll for karma. Especially on Christmas. Especially on HN.

Or maybe I misunderstood your point as being some snippy remark, in which
case, sorry.

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swalberg
A few years ago a co-worker and I built a system for integrating our company's
statements with the post office's online bill payment system. I picked
"Brownlee" and "Harris" for the server names after two postal workers that...
went postal.

The names stuck for a while until someone high up asked what the names meant.
I had to change the names after that :(

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mrb
At home I use star names (from the sky):

    
    
      * deneb
      * vega
      * betelgeuse
      * nashira
      * procyon
    

At work, for simple networks, I use the name of the function the server
implements:

    
    
      * mail
      * fw (firewall)
      * fs (file server)
      * intranet
      * backup
      * virt (eg. ESXi vCenter)
    

I don't understand people who insist on appending a 001 postfix to every
server name. Firstly, you will most likely never have hundreds of servers
fulfilling the same function. Secondly, if you do you will 3 digits may not
even be sufficient. So just start with mail, mail2, ... mail10, ... You have
files named after servers and "ls" don't show them in numerical order? Use "ls
-v". Your management tool don't sort them? Big deal. It's much more painful to
have to type "001" the hundreds/thousands of time you will need to ping a
server or ssh into it.

~~~
modoc
Depends on who you are:) We number them with a -01 suffix, and they also have
a client name prefix, but each cluster will often have 20-30 servers. Plus
it's easy to enable bash auto-complete for ssh/ping/scp based on your known
hosts file.

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colbyolson
Cheesy, but I use types of birds, based on what the machine reminds me of.

    
    
        iPhone — Chickadee
        Macbook — Pigeon
        MacbookPro — Peregrine
        Time Capsule — Grouse
        Windows box — Dodo

------
jtdowney
My team came up with using Pixar characters for server names but were told no
by the Universities hostmaster. Apparently the University had previously
gotten C&D letters from Disney for something similar.

------
zdw
I've worked places where monsters (dracula, zombie, etc.) and planets (mars,
europa, etc.) were names.

The periodic table example seems the most useful, as it's roughly the size of
a /24.

~~~
wyclif
My University CS department used classical music composers: copland, holst,
strauss, &c.

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inetsee
One place I worked at used the seven dwarves as machine names (not that many
machines at that time). I can understand the need to use functional names
where dozens (or hundreds) of servers are accessed by dozens (or hundreds or
thousands) of people.

On my personal network I use ship names from Iain Banks Culture books.

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spc476
At work, we use our pet names for physical servers, and city names for virtual
servers (and my partner always gives me grief over truth-or-consequences). One
problem we found is that we now have to maintain a mapping of city names to
customers, so moving forward, we're naming our virtual servers after
customers.

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ComputerGuru
Our main servers are named after X-Files characters

scully.domain.com

mulder.domain.com

skinner.domain.com

reyes.domain.com

etc. :)

We have other servers with single roles given "normal" names, such as
chat.domain.com and mail.domain.com

------
CWIZO
At my former company we used car names (yugo, veyron, fetish (yes that's a
car), ...) and at some other we used (Slovenian) river names (sava, drava,
mura, ...).

Where I work now, we use super heroes (batman, hulk, ironman, ...).

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TREYisRAD
I use punctuation for my home servers.

    
    
      Solidus /
      Guillemet >>
      Pilcrow ¶
      Interrobang ‽
      Snark .~
      Numero #
      Caret ^
      Bullet *
      Tilde ~

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wyclif
I worked for a company where naming conventions for the server farm were left
to me, so I used Transformers names: jetfire, mudflap, landmine, and so on.

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callmeed
We use the last names of famous 80's baseball players

Mattingly Gooden Puckett Dawson Ripken Gwynn Saberhagen

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jrockway
I use animals from the Simpsons, but I have to admit, santas-little-helper is
not fun to type.

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protomyth
We were using Dakota numbers for server names. It is a little typing when you
hit 8 and 9.

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jlesk
I use composers for my slices: copland, glass, tallis, bach

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larrykubin
We use philosophers: sartre, camus, plato, aristotle, etc.

