How to Name a Computer
No matter what operating system your are installing the most difficult task is coming up with a good name for your new machine. You need to come up with a name that is meaningful and at the same time not lame. Too often machines are named with completely boring names like using "app" for an application server or "db" for a database server. This has a few problems. First and foremost it is completely lame and shows no creativity. That also causes a problem with Virtualization, machines now often do more than one specific task.
The best strategy I have seen is to choose nouns from a grouping in the real world. Choose a different class of nouns for different classes of machines. For example, you can name all of your machines after sea creatures. Servers could be names after species of whales while workstations after fish. Just make sure you pick a category that has enough items that aren't hard to spell.
But there are drawbacks to this method. The computer lab where I went to school used cars for names of the lab machines. Machines had names like "Corvette" and "Ferrari" which was great when the 286 was fast but by the time I was using the machines a 286 just didn't deserve the name of great sports cars. You also run the risk of non-computer literate people thinking your are insane as you discuss with your colleagues about upgrading "Chewbacca" and "R2D2".
In my home network I use names like "Viggen" and "Gripen". Bonus points if you can figure out the class I am using for my machine names.
Im swedish so ofcourse I know what those are ;)
Posted by KG on July 01, 2008 at 02:39 PM EDT #
That´s easy ... swedish fighter aircrafts ;)
Posted by Joerg M. on July 01, 2008 at 03:51 PM EDT #
While I agree that machines themselves shouldn't be named "app" or "db", I think there should be CNAMES or additional A/AAAA pointers with these names pointing to the individual machines that provide the service.
It's a pain to replace machines that run services if all other machines are using that specific hostname instead of the service name. If you go along with the CNAME/A/AAAA way, the only thing you need to do (well, almost) is to change your zone file.
Posted by Karl M on July 01, 2008 at 04:14 PM EDT #
I suppose you have machines named Draken and Lansen and Tunnan too.
Posted by Thommy M. on July 01, 2008 at 06:42 PM EDT #
As fun as it sounds using your method I have had many situations where being able to know a machines location environment and purpose through it's name has been extremely helpful.
Posted by Ché Kristo on July 01, 2008 at 07:14 PM EDT #
I'm sure people trying to hack your systems like having them named after what they do as well. Oh, it's called blahblahblahdb? Maybe it's running a database. Let me try some database based attacks on it... :P
Posted by Brian on July 02, 2008 at 04:39 PM EDT #
It's a pain to replace machines that run services if all other machines are using that specific hostname instead of the service name.
Posted by cheap computers canada on November 05, 2009 at 03:44 PM EST #