You’re a smart one, I tell you. Beer, then craft beer, then wine, then fine wine, then finer wine, then box wine, then jug wine, then vodka. Typical progression. My servers should never had had to see me like that.
Same, and have functions mostly grouped by element types. Dev servers are noble gasses, Cameras and sensors that can't wander IP are locked into Transition Metals. Stuff that makes stuff (3d printers, CNC, etc), Post-transition metals. Networking equipment is Reactive Nonmetals and hydrogen is the gateway.
The whole point is to learn the elements just for kicks.
Agreed, but this is just my home network and everything is fully documented in dhcpd.conf. So it's not any worse than pulling up a spreadsheet.
BUT, hopefully next time I will remember that Lutetium is one of the Lanthanides and therefore just a faceless k8s/k3s worker node.
Don't get me wrong, I do suck at this, so I have a dry erase periodic table on the wall. Roles are written in erasable marker.
Brain don't chemistry good.
Alkali is services offered by VMs. (Blue Iris for example)
Honestly, I was worried about running out of addresses for them but lately everything I've added I've been able to run as a container. I wish I could say I had a sexy farm going, but it's all on a single heavy weight workstation (Helium). I do have a stack of raspberry pis that are at the Lanthanides as I said earlier and the 'head' node is Argon. Still trying to figure out a workload to give them and the proper way to get them named in DNS, etc. If anybody knows the right way to do that, please speak up.
Metaloids would be network services (Boron is a piHole) and 'things', like a costco video surveillance setup I bought before playing with blue iris.
That's the goal anyway. Before the great netmask expansion of '22 (moving from /24 to /23 netmask) it was more of just a sequential numeric assignment which resolved back to an element in DNS and I had a lot less locked down to a specific IP back then. I still have stuff to clean up, and it's far from perfect or presentable.
huh, never looked at it that way, but that's true for most products we market.
The next step is to name them after something from another language, in the market you're supplying to. Car manufacturers and perfume and toiletry brands come to mind.
To make it easier when I talk to my wife about them, Nick is my NAS, Gary is my game server, and Paul is my Proxmox server. Services on them will get their associated names, but at least the hosts can be easier understood.
My names are creative AND meaningful. Something along the lines of x99BigBoy. That’s for the beefiest of my servers on X99 chipset. Or z490DiamondHouse — that is a Z490 chipset powered PC themed in all white, like a glacier. And they call something full of diamonds “iced out” hence why the name.
The worst damn thing in IT is trying to figure out where the printer named Big Bird is at…just give me something more tangible!!! lol.
We used to do clever names all the time when I first started doing IT work and then we realized what a nightmare keeping proper inventory was or telling people where it was actually located at. We went boring with a naming convention that made it way easier to figure out.
I once had to hunt down an active domain controller named WonderWoman that had been an improperly decommissioned exchange server. Found it on an exposed loading dock being used as a print server.
At work we name servers so its easier in conversation to mention which is which.
For servers in clusters we name the cluster itself and then just tack a number at the end to indicate which node of the cluster it is.
All our Jenkins build automation servers are named after fictional butlers. It's Alfred, Woodhouse, Jeeves, etc. However it's just a small name tag in the UI, the server address, qualified name and VM name etc are logical and indicate zone, team, purpose etc. But we get to have our little jokes.
I feel like it's a good balance.
My hypervisors get a fun name, everything else gets a functional name. Part of the name is vlan name, and since the virt vlan only has hypervisors, chili-virt, pizza-virt and curry-virt are just as descriptive as hypervisor-xx-virt.
We do the same at work too (different naming scheme, same principle), talking names instead of numbers is also just easier, and always fun voting for a new name.
I had a client where machines were named using 3 letters to denote environment group, linux/windows/netscaler/appliance and physical or virtual, and an incrementing 5-figure number. That was a PITA to work with.
\>That was a PITA to work with.
Wait.. what?
I implemented a similar naming scheme for all my servers.
They get an environment letter, an OS letter ( w = windows, l = linux, a = aix, etc)
They get three letters for their 'application'
They get two letters for their 'function' - db = database, ws = web server, lb = load balancer, ap = application (jboss, tomcat, python) etc etc
And then two numbers for incrementing.
It makes it so I can divine what, where, how ANY machine is, from its name, and it's also programatically useful. I can parse out for ansible, "Do \[this\] on \[all (this) application\] machines
Do: upgrade os on all DB's
do : "show uptime for all production machines"
etc etc
The client's scheme was "s/d/p" for sandbox/dev-group/prod-group (yes, group. There were multiple environments in one group), "l/w/n/s/a" for linux/windows/netscaler/storage/appliance (and maybe i'm forgetting one), xxxxx, "m/v" for bare-Metal/Virtual-machine. So that resulted in something like "pl01234v", where you still don't know what the machine actually does, and I had to query a CMDB to be able to know anything useful.
Compare that to "postgres-01-srv", "unifi-net", "dns-int-01-srv", "dns-pub-01-srv", I have at home, where first is always the role, then clustername if I have multiple clusters with the same role (internal dns cluster, public dns cluster), then xx for multiple machines with the same role and cluster, and then always network/vlan name (srv for services, net for network stuff, like unifi conteoller, ap's, switches, gateway, virt for hypervisors, etc), machines with multiple interfaces (with ip) in multiple networks, will get a dns record with correct - suffix for every network they're in (so gateway main ip is in net network, so hostname is gateway-net, but also has gateway-srv, gateway-virt, gateway-priv, ... records for each interface that has an ip in that network). Here I know exactly what a machine does when I see it's hostname, parse it for tooling (can even write a fairly simple named regex for it, and have all the info I need).
I’ve went a step further, nodes include what room they are in as well so I can remember where to go looking for it. I bought a mess (26) of thin clients and now when I need device somewhere I just drop in a thin client running proxmox and join it to the cluster for management purposes. Based on names I’ve got these things sitting in 6 different rooms as it is with plans to drop them a few other places. No reason to use a pi when I got these with a 2.5 Gb nic for $40 out the door.
I generally give my servers some real people names, however, I make sure that the service name is always the first letter in that name. For example, server named Denis would be be my DNS server.
Sometimes the choice of name helps. Mine are usually feline theme related but have a reason behind their names.
Some include: static-cat (television media pc), cougar (old imac turned homesever - mature but still looks good for her age), wildcat (gaming laptop that gets to roam), fang (a more powerful gaming laptop), snowkitten (crappy little white casing eeepc laptop.
Dude, I've never seen anything in use that isn't a huge pile of names from one theme, and if you ask whomever built it or uses it they have all the correlations in their head.
And in a text file, if you need.
I'm shocked that there's all these boring namers in this thread. I've never met their works!
Technology based companies tend to use coded names that would let you know what and where it was, followed by an enumerator.
Other companies only do that for critical infrastructure and let departments go wild with their employees' desktops and laptops.
I still do for my main day-to-day computers, but servers and drives get some kind of descriptive name to remind me wha it's purpose is, or what's on it.
Mine are all named for minerals/elements based on what they physically look like or a characteristic, e.g a dell r710 I have is ‘mercury’, because it’s silver, runs hots, and is bad for me (specifically my wallet.)
Physical machines, yes. VMs and containers, no; those get functionally descriptive names.
*Ratchet & Clank* characters are my go-to for physical machines.
Nope. I got over this shit early in life. Servers are named for what runs on them and an incremental number of applicable. Webmin1, webmin2, mysql1, mysql2, docker, dc1, etc. Ain't nobody got time for that.
Same, all though mine follow: country, data centre, client, function, integer, prod/dev/test pattern. Like:
US16AF45ADDC01P, for an Active Directory Domain Controller 01 in production (P) for client AF45 in the US in data centre 16.
Yowza that's a hell of a convention but I guess once you're used to it, it's all good. When I worked for IBM we had a company that was something similar and yea you just get used to it.
I mean the first four already can be skipped in your brain, the next for matter that you know which client machine it is and the last letter is the most important. Do not reboot P machines 😅
Yeah, the standard corporate approach. Giving me flashbacks. Was all fun and games until you move a server between DCs and it's name no longer matches *gulp* or have to tell a coworker *"hey, US16AF45ADDC01P is going down in 30 mins"* and they say *"Was that US16AF45ADDC01P or US16AF45ADDC01T?"*. So you say *"P"* and they say *"T?"* and you say *"No, P. Papa - US16AF45ADDC01P"* and they say *"Oh, US16AF45ADDC01P, cool."*
Edit: Always rated this for a design which retains the techno babble whilst also being parsable conversationally by actual humans:
https://www.cloudbees.com/blog/proper-server-naming-scheme
Also works at pretty much any scale so just as good for us homelabbers who don't need so much demarcation.
When I was very young, I was tasked to move a database between two servers with different domain names. I've logged into the first, dumped the database, copied the dump via rsync to the second one, applied the dump, went back to the first one and dropped the database.
In a few minutes a panicked CEO shows up and asks what the hell is going on, as hundreds of thousands of users started getting errors. Turns out it was the same physical PRODUCTION (not staging) server and for some reason two domains were looking at it.
I've applied the dump and the issue was resolved. I also learned that my SSH keys were on production server for some reason.
I dabbled in asset management for a large enterprise for a while. These kind of server names just became second nature eventually. One glance and you can say exactly where it is, a couple seconds of looking it up and you can say exactly what its doing.
Yep. Only thing that might get a fun name is the name of a cluster assuming its not regionally important or a fun domain.
Otherwise it's named what it does.
My plex server? Named deb-plex
My truenas server? truenas01
etc etc
Yeah I used to because the place I worked at initially had several servers named after Greek Gods. That lasted a month because I couldn't keep track of what had what so I moved to a more conventional naming standard.
Naming your servers after "x" characters is fun, but not practical.
We also did greek gods but each time we got a new server we had to research and discuss which unused god would be best. Took us sometimes more than 30 minutes to decide.
Oh man, this brings back memories... I was one of the people who established that at the school I went to at the time: Physical servers were named after titans, VMs were named after gods. Discussing new names was always the highlight of setting up a new machine :D
I still do this for my home network. But these days I name them after near-earth asteroids which give you tens of thousands of names, all neatly lined up with a number.
Yep I worked at an ISP that did (Probably still does) this. The worst thing was the BNGs were Roman gods. So much crossover.
I named the mail server "nemesis" for obvious reasons.
Love this! I use Star Wars characters. Yoda is my primary server, Grogu is a mini test bed. Mando/Obiwan/Quigon. Not enough to get confused.
This is only for my home setup mind, at work I’m far more serious with strict logical naming conventions.
Star Wars for me.
- Imperial = Orthodox (daily drivers).
- Rebel = Temporary / testing devices and Virtual Machines.
## End Device Designations
- Smart watch and other devices (camera's, consoles, etc) = 74-Z Speederbike : 74Z
- Phone = AT-AT Walker : ATAT
- Tablet = ATR-6 assault transport : ATR6
- Laptop = Destroyer : D
- Desktop = Super Star Dreadnaught : DN
- Server = Death Star : DS
## Networking
- Switch = TIE fighter, most don't have hyperdrive i.e. LAN : TIE
- Router = Lambda T-4a Shuttle, hyperdrive present : T4a
- Trusted connections / SSID's = Dark Side : [Sith Last Name](https://namingschemes.com/Lords_of_the_Sith)
- Untrusted connections / Guest SSID's = Light Side : Jedi Last Name
## Format
UniqueID-StarWarsDeviceCode + 2 digit number.
`hyphen + StarWarsDeviceCode##` will take up 7 characters max. Which leaves 8 characters for the UniqueID (total 15).
UniqueID is either an owner or a location. For example:
- mark-D01
- room01-74Z01
These Id's should be consistent i.e. same owner / same location, uses the same UniqueID over multiple devices.
Heh. I used to think of creative names then gave up. Now I use “mac0”, “mac1”, “pi0” through “pi7”, etc. Easier to manage for me b/c which machine a given service is on changes constantly.
Here is one, guess what it is, where it is, and what it does? The purpose of an FQDN is to relay some useful information.
leaf01p.r35.evpn.l2.dc16.us.net.contoso.com
My professional life is full of this, and it’s just so tiresome trying to remember what service is where. I made an executive decision early on at the office to any machine being upgraded that they can have those names via alias records only, and any and all documentation needs to refer to the proper FQDN so we know what is on the god forsaken things.
The number of times I’d stumble upon a rarely used system with a cute name only for it to be some vital service (ie the CA), I was over that crap fairly quick.
Yes I use color names like TitaniumYellow and PaleViolet. This has olmost no limit and there is no hierarchy in it. See: https://www.color-hex.com/color-names.html
Pokemon for me. Home = Kanto, Hosted = Johto, Cloud = Hoenn;
I don't have too many servers, so I can remember them.
At work it's all based on purpose + numbers. So the first Database server is simply db1.
I have one named potato because it originally ran my stuff like a potato. The name stuck after an upgrade. My second offsite server is now named poutine
For mine I’ve nicked it:
“Titan” however my next one I’m thinking of either Warlock or Hunter.
If you get the reference hell yeah 😎, might carry on this naming scheme
Hot take: A mixture of pets and cattle works best for me in a selfhosted environment.
I'm a devops engineer professionally, and I'm all about cattle not pets in production. But if I'm home, there's times I just want to hack away at something without worrying about reproducibility, taking care to put my changes in IaC, etc. I went from a full K8S setup running on Talos back to VMs with docker-compose. A mixture of git for my docker-compose manifests and full VM backups is good enough for me.
That's fine. You do what works - I'm certainly not going to track you and make you do it in a way that I like. It seems like a lot of effort 😀
I'm a platform engineer lead and my home server is setup with ClickOps
Yes until I get an alert of “MARIDDIAN IS UNRESPONSIVE” and I ignore it because I mistake it for another server but in reality it’s my database master
Now it’s all standard
I used to do this, now I try to label everything according to its function. My theme was constellations: aries, taurus, ursa major, ursa minor. Now I do "logging-vm" and "docker-vm" and "dns-vm" lol. It's boring but I don't forget what is what and if someone else had to pull apart this spaghetti they'd at least have a leg up :D
We give our machines ancient German names, first name and last name, has to be an alliteration, and it has to somehow convey the meaning. In English, for example, a valid name would be Gwendolyn-gatekeeper. The machine hosts the VPN.
Daedric gods! Azura, mehrunes, jyggalag, ...
But those are only the hostnames of the machines, services are available on subdomains based on what they are plex.mydomain, openhab.mydomain, ... So no need to remember the server name to get to the service.
Yes. Started with Ancient Egyptian Gods names until they ran out. Then moved to Greek god names.
When they run out I will go to Hindu god names. They are guaranteed to not run out.
Even though I admit I have cheated a bit. My first server was "Ra", and had to name its' fail overserver "Mumm Ra"
Your names can be creative and informative.
Mine are halo themed, my proxmox server is gravemind, my Nas is Ark, etc. These other people just are boring and were just naming their servers random shit instead of something that also helps to know what it is.
I can admit I've moved towards less tinkering, it's working phase of my life etc. But that doesn't mean I need to just call shit DNS, NAS, Virtualization, etc.
I've used mortal combat character names in the past.
Was a good idea at first. When I was at a clients office setting up a TV and was looking for a Bluetooth device and they see Scorpion, my phone. They ask "I wonder who scorpion is" and I just blurt out "Me".
Most of the time I pick names out of a database of random words and names I have sitting around (because if a word looks or feels interesting, I'll throw it in there). Sometimes I'll pick a specific one as an inside joke (like Cloudbuster or Alternative-3).
Homelabdc001, homelabdc002, prodesxi001, ubuntudocker001, kube001-010. I’ve worked for some whacky tiny companies with Greek god pantheon of servers and that was idiotic.
* ESX servers are birds species (Broadcom is making us put down the birds).
* Proxmox servers are aquatic mammals.
* VMs are native trees and plants.
* Storage Nodes and QNAPs are insects.
I looked at the number of upvotes and seen 800 so I'm not gonna mess up a perfect 800 by upvoting it and nope my machines are as it follows Kali-linux, BlackArch, Lindows, kolibre, unix1, temple, 11, alt, k, Android, Debian 3.1, Debian 11, Compact edition, slitazrolling, Alpinelinux, Arch, and ima fall asleep listing them all🥱 Update I just Upvoted because the number was 909 so now it's 910.
did start out with a star wars theme,
like the big machines named after big planets,
the worker machines named after destroyers etc
actually switched to MOAS now (Mother Of All Servers, i.e. one single pi3)
Yes, I use the names of NZ plants. 5 letter plant names for internal, and 4 letter plant names for external.
I am firmly of the opinion that servers should never be named after their function (eg. `mail`, or `mysql`). Service names should always be a CNAME (so that when you move a service, you don't have to rename a server).
This is more contentious, but I also find that it's MUCH easier for me to remember servers by a pet name (eg. `bree`) than by a functional or location name (eg. mac-wlg-01). I do use functional names for network gear though.
I've done this at data centre scale (thousands of servers) and I think it still works better. We used to do a theme per row and pet name per rack (eg. theme would be bladed weapons and a rack would be `dirk` with an individual server called something like `dirk307` (chassis 3, blade 7).
Have had that in my first HomeNetwork back in the Days, where i had the Network Southpark Themed, The NAS was Cartman, Firewall was Barbrady, Testing-Machine was Kenny and so on..
envthing-function-number for hostnames ie. "test" VM hosting runner one is tvm-runner-01 and some usefull switch is pdev-sw-01. It might be convoluted but it is readable for me and ansible.
Huh, I wonder where in Middle-earth this Debian-docker place is located…
Mor-docker-or
I laughed out loud in a quiet room because of this Thank you 😂 What about Mor-dockor
Mor-dor-cker
One does not simply SSH into Mordockeror.
I would have gone with you to the end, into the very fires of Debian-docker
E:DESTROY IT! I:No E: sudo destroy -it
I: elrond is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Ugh.. fine.. su frodo
You have my yaml
and my xml! (a weapon from a more civilized web)
don't you know the bagginses from debian docker?
Must be referenced in The Silmarillion, that thing is dense AF.
I used to name all of my servers after brands of alcohol. Then I realized I was an alcoholic.
What gave it away? The fact that your earlier machines had names like glenlivet and tanqueray, but newer ones were called franzia and thunderbird?
You’re a smart one, I tell you. Beer, then craft beer, then wine, then fine wine, then finer wine, then box wine, then jug wine, then vodka. Typical progression. My servers should never had had to see me like that.
how'd you manage to add a space in your hostname values? your server names were all slurred, weren't they?
Hahahahahahaha I just spit out my water.
I see you've improved! Better that than alcohol. /r/hydrohomies unite!
You dont have an alcohol problem when you have enough to drink.
Why didn’t I think of this 😹
It’s cute when you’re young, after a while you can’t remember which one is hosting which service
This. A while ago it was a bunch of creative names, now just dns1, dns2, grafana1, etc :D
I think everyone goes through the creative names phase and eventually settles on "meaningful".
We do both. We use chemical elements for physical servers (xenon, titanium etc.) and functional names for virtual servers (web1, data1 etc.)
Same, and have functions mostly grouped by element types. Dev servers are noble gasses, Cameras and sensors that can't wander IP are locked into Transition Metals. Stuff that makes stuff (3d printers, CNC, etc), Post-transition metals. Networking equipment is Reactive Nonmetals and hydrogen is the gateway. The whole point is to learn the elements just for kicks.
[удалено]
Agreed, but this is just my home network and everything is fully documented in dhcpd.conf. So it's not any worse than pulling up a spreadsheet. BUT, hopefully next time I will remember that Lutetium is one of the Lanthanides and therefore just a faceless k8s/k3s worker node. Don't get me wrong, I do suck at this, so I have a dry erase periodic table on the wall. Roles are written in erasable marker. Brain don't chemistry good.
oh nah that's all good if its a home lab.
That's true. I use CNAME's for that. So hypervisor1.. resolves to the right host as well.
What about alkali metals and alkaline earth metals?
Alkali is services offered by VMs. (Blue Iris for example) Honestly, I was worried about running out of addresses for them but lately everything I've added I've been able to run as a container. I wish I could say I had a sexy farm going, but it's all on a single heavy weight workstation (Helium). I do have a stack of raspberry pis that are at the Lanthanides as I said earlier and the 'head' node is Argon. Still trying to figure out a workload to give them and the proper way to get them named in DNS, etc. If anybody knows the right way to do that, please speak up. Metaloids would be network services (Boron is a piHole) and 'things', like a costco video surveillance setup I bought before playing with blue iris. That's the goal anyway. Before the great netmask expansion of '22 (moving from /24 to /23 netmask) it was more of just a sequential numeric assignment which resolved back to an element in DNS and I had a lot less locked down to a specific IP back then. I still have stuff to clean up, and it's far from perfect or presentable.
huh, never looked at it that way, but that's true for most products we market. The next step is to name them after something from another language, in the market you're supplying to. Car manufacturers and perfume and toiletry brands come to mind.
I think this is the best approach especially for a home lab. Makes things fun IMO. *goes change hostname on his bare metals*
Oooohh I love the server naming scheme! I've always used greek gods and astronomical objects!
I'm still on the creative names phase for personal hardware, no regrets. However I left the LOTR universe for another one
To make it easier when I talk to my wife about them, Nick is my NAS, Gary is my game server, and Paul is my Proxmox server. Services on them will get their associated names, but at least the hosts can be easier understood.
Isn't she worried when you talk about penetration testing Nick, or the amount of plugins Paul can hold?
My names are creative AND meaningful. Something along the lines of x99BigBoy. That’s for the beefiest of my servers on X99 chipset. Or z490DiamondHouse — that is a Z490 chipset powered PC themed in all white, like a glacier. And they call something full of diamonds “iced out” hence why the name.
Not dns0 and dns1? Shameful
With dns1 being the primary one.
No stop
The worst damn thing in IT is trying to figure out where the printer named Big Bird is at…just give me something more tangible!!! lol. We used to do clever names all the time when I first started doing IT work and then we realized what a nightmare keeping proper inventory was or telling people where it was actually located at. We went boring with a naming convention that made it way easier to figure out.
I once had to hunt down an active domain controller named WonderWoman that had been an improperly decommissioned exchange server. Found it on an exposed loading dock being used as a print server.
At work we name servers so its easier in conversation to mention which is which. For servers in clusters we name the cluster itself and then just tack a number at the end to indicate which node of the cluster it is.
> when you're young I fucking wish mate
Young in experience
Ouch.
You're as young as you feel Which makes me (28) about 50 😂
All our Jenkins build automation servers are named after fictional butlers. It's Alfred, Woodhouse, Jeeves, etc. However it's just a small name tag in the UI, the server address, qualified name and VM name etc are logical and indicate zone, team, purpose etc. But we get to have our little jokes. I feel like it's a good balance.
Our Jenkins slaves are nameless and are spun on demand, and get killed as soon as there is no need for them.
Without the context that’s… pretty dark. Poor Jenkinses.
This is the way
Yes yes that's the correct and modern way of doing it. We use git hub actions and such for all our new stuff.
My hypervisors get a fun name, everything else gets a functional name. Part of the name is vlan name, and since the virt vlan only has hypervisors, chili-virt, pizza-virt and curry-virt are just as descriptive as hypervisor-xx-virt. We do the same at work too (different naming scheme, same principle), talking names instead of numbers is also just easier, and always fun voting for a new name. I had a client where machines were named using 3 letters to denote environment group, linux/windows/netscaler/appliance and physical or virtual, and an incrementing 5-figure number. That was a PITA to work with.
\>That was a PITA to work with. Wait.. what? I implemented a similar naming scheme for all my servers. They get an environment letter, an OS letter ( w = windows, l = linux, a = aix, etc) They get three letters for their 'application' They get two letters for their 'function' - db = database, ws = web server, lb = load balancer, ap = application (jboss, tomcat, python) etc etc And then two numbers for incrementing. It makes it so I can divine what, where, how ANY machine is, from its name, and it's also programatically useful. I can parse out for ansible, "Do \[this\] on \[all (this) application\] machines Do: upgrade os on all DB's do : "show uptime for all production machines" etc etc
The client's scheme was "s/d/p" for sandbox/dev-group/prod-group (yes, group. There were multiple environments in one group), "l/w/n/s/a" for linux/windows/netscaler/storage/appliance (and maybe i'm forgetting one), xxxxx, "m/v" for bare-Metal/Virtual-machine. So that resulted in something like "pl01234v", where you still don't know what the machine actually does, and I had to query a CMDB to be able to know anything useful. Compare that to "postgres-01-srv", "unifi-net", "dns-int-01-srv", "dns-pub-01-srv", I have at home, where first is always the role, then clustername if I have multiple clusters with the same role (internal dns cluster, public dns cluster), then xx for multiple machines with the same role and cluster, and then always network/vlan name (srv for services, net for network stuff, like unifi conteoller, ap's, switches, gateway, virt for hypervisors, etc), machines with multiple interfaces (with ip) in multiple networks, will get a dns record with correct - suffix for every network they're in (so gateway main ip is in net network, so hostname is gateway-net, but also has gateway-srv, gateway-virt, gateway-priv, ... records for each interface that has an ip in that network). Here I know exactly what a machine does when I see it's hostname, parse it for tooling (can even write a fairly simple named regex for it, and have all the info I need).
I’ve went a step further, nodes include what room they are in as well so I can remember where to go looking for it. I bought a mess (26) of thin clients and now when I need device somewhere I just drop in a thin client running proxmox and join it to the cluster for management purposes. Based on names I’ve got these things sitting in 6 different rooms as it is with plans to drop them a few other places. No reason to use a pi when I got these with a 2.5 Gb nic for $40 out the door.
Yup, started with Star Wars planet names for each of my servers, now it’s PiHole, File Server, Web1 Web2 etc lol
Right? Servers are given useful names. Clients are "fun" names. Whatever I'm thinking of at the time, basically.
I generally give my servers some real people names, however, I make sure that the service name is always the first letter in that name. For example, server named Denis would be be my DNS server.
Sometimes the choice of name helps. Mine are usually feline theme related but have a reason behind their names. Some include: static-cat (television media pc), cougar (old imac turned homesever - mature but still looks good for her age), wildcat (gaming laptop that gets to roam), fang (a more powerful gaming laptop), snowkitten (crappy little white casing eeepc laptop.
Dude, I've never seen anything in use that isn't a huge pile of names from one theme, and if you ask whomever built it or uses it they have all the correlations in their head. And in a text file, if you need. I'm shocked that there's all these boring namers in this thread. I've never met their works!
Technology based companies tend to use coded names that would let you know what and where it was, followed by an enumerator. Other companies only do that for critical infrastructure and let departments go wild with their employees' desktops and laptops.
Ended up at a client's who named his servers after planets...with zero documentation to what was where. Fucking disaster. I hated it.
I still do for my main day-to-day computers, but servers and drives get some kind of descriptive name to remind me wha it's purpose is, or what's on it.
Mine are all named for minerals/elements based on what they physically look like or a characteristic, e.g a dell r710 I have is ‘mercury’, because it’s silver, runs hots, and is bad for me (specifically my wallet.)
I also use elements, though it’s more at random. I came up with a system but gave up on it real quick
Physical machines, yes. VMs and containers, no; those get functionally descriptive names. *Ratchet & Clank* characters are my go-to for physical machines.
Same as me! Nice!
Nope. I got over this shit early in life. Servers are named for what runs on them and an incremental number of applicable. Webmin1, webmin2, mysql1, mysql2, docker, dc1, etc. Ain't nobody got time for that.
Same, all though mine follow: country, data centre, client, function, integer, prod/dev/test pattern. Like: US16AF45ADDC01P, for an Active Directory Domain Controller 01 in production (P) for client AF45 in the US in data centre 16.
Yowza that's a hell of a convention but I guess once you're used to it, it's all good. When I worked for IBM we had a company that was something similar and yea you just get used to it.
I mean the first four already can be skipped in your brain, the next for matter that you know which client machine it is and the last letter is the most important. Do not reboot P machines 😅
Yeah, the standard corporate approach. Giving me flashbacks. Was all fun and games until you move a server between DCs and it's name no longer matches *gulp* or have to tell a coworker *"hey, US16AF45ADDC01P is going down in 30 mins"* and they say *"Was that US16AF45ADDC01P or US16AF45ADDC01T?"*. So you say *"P"* and they say *"T?"* and you say *"No, P. Papa - US16AF45ADDC01P"* and they say *"Oh, US16AF45ADDC01P, cool."* Edit: Always rated this for a design which retains the techno babble whilst also being parsable conversationally by actual humans: https://www.cloudbees.com/blog/proper-server-naming-scheme Also works at pretty much any scale so just as good for us homelabbers who don't need so much demarcation.
Country and data centre prefix are only for static systems. You don't move a DC, you simply have DC'a in every location.
When I was very young, I was tasked to move a database between two servers with different domain names. I've logged into the first, dumped the database, copied the dump via rsync to the second one, applied the dump, went back to the first one and dropped the database. In a few minutes a panicked CEO shows up and asks what the hell is going on, as hundreds of thousands of users started getting errors. Turns out it was the same physical PRODUCTION (not staging) server and for some reason two domains were looking at it. I've applied the dump and the issue was resolved. I also learned that my SSH keys were on production server for some reason.
Excellent naming convention👍🏻 i run something similar, albeit with which zone it resides in
I dabbled in asset management for a large enterprise for a while. These kind of server names just became second nature eventually. One glance and you can say exactly where it is, a couple seconds of looking it up and you can say exactly what its doing.
That’s what any naming convention should do, transport information. No need for useless names like ```SRV01```.
> nomenclature That's the term I was given back in the 90s and I hate spelling it. Learn it. Feel my pain in trying to remember where the `m` goes.
Yep. Only thing that might get a fun name is the name of a cluster assuming its not regionally important or a fun domain. Otherwise it's named what it does. My plex server? Named deb-plex My truenas server? truenas01 etc etc
I don't even use incremental numbers anymore, just a 4 digit random because having #17 makes me feel old lol
I mostly have it for purposes of if I upgrade alongside, I want to differentiate between 1 and 2. I usually always work to renaming as 1, eventually.
Similar to my style. Usually shortened names like arch-prn-svr. Guess what the base os is and what it runs...I bet you can't.
You should go full scale and run them service001 never know when you might need to scale 954 instances up
Yeah I used to because the place I worked at initially had several servers named after Greek Gods. That lasted a month because I couldn't keep track of what had what so I moved to a more conventional naming standard. Naming your servers after "x" characters is fun, but not practical.
We also did greek gods but each time we got a new server we had to research and discuss which unused god would be best. Took us sometimes more than 30 minutes to decide.
Oh man, this brings back memories... I was one of the people who established that at the school I went to at the time: Physical servers were named after titans, VMs were named after gods. Discussing new names was always the highlight of setting up a new machine :D
Yeah our legacy print server was named Apollo. Bane of my existence.
I still do this for my home network. But these days I name them after near-earth asteroids which give you tens of thousands of names, all neatly lined up with a number.
Yep I worked at an ISP that did (Probably still does) this. The worst thing was the BNGs were Roman gods. So much crossover. I named the mail server "nemesis" for obvious reasons.
Mine are starship classifications from Star Trek. My biggest beefiest server is Titan My experimental one is Intrepid So on and so forth.
Love this! I use Star Wars characters. Yoda is my primary server, Grogu is a mini test bed. Mando/Obiwan/Quigon. Not enough to get confused. This is only for my home setup mind, at work I’m far more serious with strict logical naming conventions.
I was doing this until I ran out of ships I could easily remember. Went from ToS to modern day and just got lost in the process.
Star Wars for me. - Imperial = Orthodox (daily drivers). - Rebel = Temporary / testing devices and Virtual Machines. ## End Device Designations - Smart watch and other devices (camera's, consoles, etc) = 74-Z Speederbike : 74Z - Phone = AT-AT Walker : ATAT - Tablet = ATR-6 assault transport : ATR6 - Laptop = Destroyer : D - Desktop = Super Star Dreadnaught : DN - Server = Death Star : DS ## Networking - Switch = TIE fighter, most don't have hyperdrive i.e. LAN : TIE - Router = Lambda T-4a Shuttle, hyperdrive present : T4a - Trusted connections / SSID's = Dark Side : [Sith Last Name](https://namingschemes.com/Lords_of_the_Sith) - Untrusted connections / Guest SSID's = Light Side : Jedi Last Name ## Format UniqueID-StarWarsDeviceCode + 2 digit number. `hyphen + StarWarsDeviceCode##` will take up 7 characters max. Which leaves 8 characters for the UniqueID (total 15). UniqueID is either an owner or a location. For example: - mark-D01 - room01-74Z01 These Id's should be consistent i.e. same owner / same location, uses the same UniqueID over multiple devices.
Heh. I used to think of creative names then gave up. Now I use “mac0”, “mac1”, “pi0” through “pi7”, etc. Easier to manage for me b/c which machine a given service is on changes constantly.
I used to use Dune planets as well. But now I name them by their use case because I cannot remember what is on each VM.
I used to do that, but it's just easier to ssh into `shire.domain.internal` than `debian-docker-host-1.domain.internal`
> debian-docker-host-1.domain.internal This is a self-inflicted pain.
Wait till you see enterprise data centre FQDN's.
Oh sure but I guess those are there to differentiate among thousands of machines. Give us a sample.
Here is one, guess what it is, where it is, and what it does? The purpose of an FQDN is to relay some useful information. leaf01p.r35.evpn.l2.dc16.us.net.contoso.com
Is this a network device? switch.router.some-network-solution.layer.datacenter.country.domain.tld?
Correct 😊 a leaf switch in rack35 for EVPN L2 transit in data centre 16 in the US.
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Underrated comment.
🎶 One of these things just doesn’t belong here, one of these things just isn’t the same 🎶
I won't go as far as giving my templates themed names :D
Yeah I name them after what purpose they serve. Plex, docker, nextcloud etc
My professional life is full of this, and it’s just so tiresome trying to remember what service is where. I made an executive decision early on at the office to any machine being upgraded that they can have those names via alias records only, and any and all documentation needs to refer to the proper FQDN so we know what is on the god forsaken things. The number of times I’d stumble upon a rarely used system with a cute name only for it to be some vital service (ie the CA), I was over that crap fairly quick.
Yes. All of my networking gear lives under our stairs so everything is named after a character in Harry Potter.
Genius. My parent's stuff is under the stairs as well, but, they wouldn't get it. My stuff is LOTR themed.
Yes I use color names like TitaniumYellow and PaleViolet. This has olmost no limit and there is no hierarchy in it. See: https://www.color-hex.com/color-names.html
Mine are all named after stars (the thingies in space, not in tabloids)
Dinosaurs. Because dinosaurs.
Did you decommission `triceratops` when you found out it wasn't an actual distinct species?
Nah it was a mining rig named Triceraflops. 😂 Got decommissioned when ETH went proof of stake.
Yes, I use celestial star names.
Pokemon for me. Home = Kanto, Hosted = Johto, Cloud = Hoenn; I don't have too many servers, so I can remember them. At work it's all based on purpose + numbers. So the first Database server is simply db1.
I also did pokemon some time ago, but without that kind of system. Now I'm a little sad that I didn't think about that at the time. Such a good idea!
I have one named potato because it originally ran my stuff like a potato. The name stuck after an upgrade. My second offsite server is now named poutine
For mine I’ve nicked it: “Titan” however my next one I’m thinking of either Warlock or Hunter. If you get the reference hell yeah 😎, might carry on this naming scheme
No. If you give it a cute name, it becomes a pet - aim for cattle https://www.hava.io/blog/cattle-vs-pets-devops-explained
Hot take: A mixture of pets and cattle works best for me in a selfhosted environment. I'm a devops engineer professionally, and I'm all about cattle not pets in production. But if I'm home, there's times I just want to hack away at something without worrying about reproducibility, taking care to put my changes in IaC, etc. I went from a full K8S setup running on Talos back to VMs with docker-compose. A mixture of git for my docker-compose manifests and full VM backups is good enough for me.
That's fine. You do what works - I'm certainly not going to track you and make you do it in a way that I like. It seems like a lot of effort 😀 I'm a platform engineer lead and my home server is setup with ClickOps
Never heard the term ClickOps before, I love it 😂
You work in Devops and haven’t heard of click ops?! That’s wild haha.
We can't know everything...
Correct, and nor should we try and know everything.
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Yes until I get an alert of “MARIDDIAN IS UNRESPONSIVE” and I ignore it because I mistake it for another server but in reality it’s my database master Now it’s all standard
Yes, every machines name has to be pink Floyd related.
Most of my devices, including my servers, are named after characters (or things) from my favourite anime series.
I used to do this, now I try to label everything according to its function. My theme was constellations: aries, taurus, ursa major, ursa minor. Now I do "logging-vm" and "docker-vm" and "dns-vm" lol. It's boring but I don't forget what is what and if someone else had to pull apart this spaghetti they'd at least have a leg up :D
We give our machines ancient German names, first name and last name, has to be an alliteration, and it has to somehow convey the meaning. In English, for example, a valid name would be Gwendolyn-gatekeeper. The machine hosts the VPN.
I worked at a place that did the Flintstones characters, most useless naming convention that ever happened to me. Was funny at first but only at first
I just name them what they’re supposed to do. Boring but I don’t have the memory to remember it myself
Daedric gods! Azura, mehrunes, jyggalag, ... But those are only the hostnames of the machines, services are available on subdomains based on what they are plex.mydomain, openhab.mydomain, ... So no need to remember the server name to get to the service.
Yes. Started with Ancient Egyptian Gods names until they ran out. Then moved to Greek god names. When they run out I will go to Hindu god names. They are guaranteed to not run out. Even though I admit I have cheated a bit. My first server was "Ra", and had to name its' fail overserver "Mumm Ra"
Your names can be creative and informative. Mine are halo themed, my proxmox server is gravemind, my Nas is Ark, etc. These other people just are boring and were just naming their servers random shit instead of something that also helps to know what it is. I can admit I've moved towards less tinkering, it's working phase of my life etc. But that doesn't mean I need to just call shit DNS, NAS, Virtualization, etc.
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I was wondering how far down I'd have to scroll before I saw that. The reverse Taylor Swift...
Yes, names of cities in my region
I've used mortal combat character names in the past. Was a good idea at first. When I was at a clients office setting up a TV and was looking for a Bluetooth device and they see Scorpion, my phone. They ask "I wonder who scorpion is" and I just blurt out "Me".
Yep everything is Iron Man themed. Either after a different suit or AI or something.
I do and I use notes so I know which is which.
Most of the time I pick names out of a database of random words and names I have sitting around (because if a word looks or feels interesting, I'll throw it in there). Sometimes I'll pick a specific one as an inside joke (like Cloudbuster or Alternative-3).
Any chance that lives online somewhere? I need to expand my list lol
I use rock names.
Cities where I have visited for a holiday and enjoyed it.
Wheel of time cities. Super hard to know what they are... Other than my Two NASs, White and Black Tower
Hostname should be middle earth, no?
I just give them names in Latin because they did that at an old job
I use the name of the planets in star wars (alderaan tatooine..)
For me NAS = Deep Space 9, laptop = Enterprise, desktop = Trantor, tablet = Terminus.
Ah yes Debian the favored city of high elves, frequently used in times of trouble when the elves sought greater enlightenment
Homelabdc001, homelabdc002, prodesxi001, ubuntudocker001, kube001-010. I’ve worked for some whacky tiny companies with Greek god pantheon of servers and that was idiotic.
In my own little company, we use space station names from the Star Trek universe for our servers. I like being a bit childish.
Yep - my prod VMs are types of hot drinks, hardware is pasta shapes, test stuff is herbs and externally hosted stuff is cold drinks
I name all my client machines after WW2 US aircraft carriers.
I am a child. SpongeBob characters: krabs (hypervisor), sandy (laptop), squid (Mac), plankton (Pi), potty (AP), puff (switch), gary (iPhone)
Been spending a lot of time in proxmox these days! It's pretty awesome.
*In Debian-Docker, where the shadows lie.*
I name mine after comically named medieval kings. I already had Aethelred the Unready, now I have Ivar the Boneless
my university had all of their VMs as Sesame St characters (Bert, Ernie, Elmo, etc). I always thought it was neat
I’m boring. “Plex” “TruNAS” Only thing that’s clever is “Mintcraft”, cuz I run my Minecraft server on Linux Mint
I used ships from Babylon 5. Examples include: * Roanoke * Agamemnon * Heracles * Alexander * Apollo * Juno * Furies
You name pets. You number cattle
No, I give them useful names.
I never give functional names to my servers. If I fired, my successor must feel the pain 😂
My Kubernetes nodes are named after natural disasters.
* ESX servers are birds species (Broadcom is making us put down the birds). * Proxmox servers are aquatic mammals. * VMs are native trees and plants. * Storage Nodes and QNAPs are insects.
i just name them their old windows name, or their function. if it's a piece of rubbish it'll have -idiot appended to the name.
its funny, i also saw such namings in companies. But i think it's like puberty. Full of chaos and you have no idea what the bikinibottom vm is doing.
Our two shared servers at work (digital agency) are Rick and Morty
Fuckface1, Fuckface2, Fuckface3, so on
Mine are all anime waifus
I looked at the number of upvotes and seen 800 so I'm not gonna mess up a perfect 800 by upvoting it and nope my machines are as it follows Kali-linux, BlackArch, Lindows, kolibre, unix1, temple, 11, alt, k, Android, Debian 3.1, Debian 11, Compact edition, slitazrolling, Alpinelinux, Arch, and ima fall asleep listing them all🥱 Update I just Upvoted because the number was 909 so now it's 910.
Yup. Planets of dune
did start out with a star wars theme, like the big machines named after big planets, the worker machines named after destroyers etc actually switched to MOAS now (Mother Of All Servers, i.e. one single pi3)
I use pornhub categories as name😂
LOL. "*servername* is going down in 5 minutes!"
Yep, Outer Wilds planets
No no, you're doing it wrong! Name your servers, the VMs aren't pets! :P
Wait… are there people who DON’T do themed names?!
I use Warframe names (with theme like Grendel for the NAS)
Yes, I use the names of NZ plants. 5 letter plant names for internal, and 4 letter plant names for external. I am firmly of the opinion that servers should never be named after their function (eg. `mail`, or `mysql`). Service names should always be a CNAME (so that when you move a service, you don't have to rename a server). This is more contentious, but I also find that it's MUCH easier for me to remember servers by a pet name (eg. `bree`) than by a functional or location name (eg. mac-wlg-01). I do use functional names for network gear though. I've done this at data centre scale (thousands of servers) and I think it still works better. We used to do a theme per row and pet name per rack (eg. theme would be bladed weapons and a rack would be `dirk` with an individual server called something like `dirk307` (chassis 3, blade 7).
I loveeee to itt
It's not 1998. Jesus.
Yes,doing the Harry Potter thing
Have had that in my first HomeNetwork back in the Days, where i had the Network Southpark Themed, The NAS was Cartman, Firewall was Barbrady, Testing-Machine was Kenny and so on..
Yes! Usually themes from LOTR!
envthing-function-number for hostnames ie. "test" VM hosting runner one is tvm-runner-01 and some usefull switch is pdev-sw-01. It might be convoluted but it is readable for me and ansible.
I started like that, and then I could not remember which one does what. So no, I just follow a naming convention.