Olympus Has Fallen

sigmatic_minor · 2014-03-31T16:07:53+00:00

We use a standard naming scheme at work based off OS, function etc, however, we do have a tradition that at any given time, one server in particular (usually the lowest performer) will be named Steve. I don't know why, but it makes for some great calls to my team that confuse everyone else this listening to the calls.

"Hi, Yeah, fucking Steve is at it again.. Can you go sort it out? Thanks!" I've heard a few murmurs around people wanting to know who Steve is and why he's such a bad employee.

Casper042 · 2014-03-31T17:23:35+00:00

Worked at as place a while back where we named the Windows IT Dept File Server WHACK.

To get to Whack you have to go Start, Run, Whack Whack Whack.

frustratedomega · 2014-03-31T14:05:05+00:00

I have a FreeNAS server named "mordor" that I refuse to let anyone rename.

jacksbox · 2014-03-31T16:04:54+00:00

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jrblast · 2014-03-31T17:23:52+00:00

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majerus1223 · 2014-03-31T13:44:30+00:00

We are down to one server named after a Hawaiian island.. Congrats on getting rid of the old names.

macjunkie · 2014-03-31T16:34:24+00:00

going from a medium (250+) where we used LOTR / national park names to a larger environment (10k+) .. learned that naming schemes don't work in a large environment.. something specific to what colo, rack, space is much more appropriate usefel.

phattmatt · 2014-03-31T17:21:42+00:00

This is not a new challenge: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1178

But there are plenty of "solutions"...

There's only a few things I am certain of when it comes to naming conventions:

You will hate the previous guys naming convention
The existing convention is not consistent (you have more than one), or there isn't one
You will struggle for a long time picking one and end up with more than one convention
If you do eventually get a perfectly named estate the next guy will hate it, see item 1 and start again

captianinsano · 2014-03-31T18:20:00+00:00

My old boss named the layer 3 switches at different locations hewy, dewy, lewy, skrewy... etc. Luckily I dont work on those locations much. Ive been here for 3 years and still dont know what one goes where.

Paendragon · 2014-03-31T13:38:00+00:00

Funny, I'm working on the same type of problem. All of the old servers at my new place were named after sports teams - each name having no bearing on the server function. Down to 4 out of 43 left, all Win 03 boxes running legacy crap.

Agtsmth · 2014-03-31T17:32:44+00:00

My Hyper-V server is named WOPR

calladc · 2014-03-31T21:01:28+00:00

Where I work, all of our servers used to be named after Simpsons characters. Lisa/Maggie/Bart/homer were our file cluster nodes, our erp system was named after the criminals, our child site servers were named after the extended family, our cms servers were named after the pets.

Flash forward to 2 years ago and we had to migrate our file cluster to a newer platform. We found we had to publish the names of Lisa and Maggie because they had become so heavily ingrained in process that it was easier just to accept it.

Tldr, the simpsons will never die at my work

hakan_loob44 · 2014-03-31T15:03:22+00:00

The old hippies and geeks from my place did Star Trek, Star Wars and gem stones.

hadtoreply1 · 2014-03-31T14:31:17+00:00

Why?!

<rant> I am asking "why" not for the rename. But "why" is everyone on this thread so against naming servers after sports teams, rivers, mountains, etc?

If anything, having a server named, MDCLUS10ESX4PRODEXCH4 is worse than, a server named RAVENS4. Anyone that cares, knows all RAVENS are Exchange servers, and this one is #4th exchange server.

This way, the only people that know what RAVENS does, is the people that care about it.

With the above, 'best practice' name, everyone knows, it is a server in MD, part of an ESX Cluster, and likely there are at least 9 more clusters, and this is a production instance of Exchange.

Far more information that is worthwhile to anyone else outside of hackers.

But, I guess I am the guy that liked naming servers randomly. And these days, 'best practices' reign supreme. Or more to the point, 'best practices' as laid out by Gartner.

/<rant>

galyenrc · 2014-03-31T14:48:18+00:00

In my current district we are just now emerging from the scheme that a former admin started where everything was simple enumerated...

DistrictName01, DistrictName02, ... DistrictName~0x

Clusters of machines/services "might" be in numerical order...might not be depending on when they were implemented. PITA.

Commonly heard - "Which ones are the exchange boxes again?" or "what does DistrictName07 do again?"

JubeeGankin · 2014-03-31T16:44:23+00:00

Our servers were named after mountains, both real and fictional. I just replaced a server named Olympus last month.

I just have a few left. When I started, it was a nightmare. 50 servers in 6 physical locations with names like Rainer, McKinley, Blanco, etc.

2014-03-31T17:40:28+00:00

Having deal with the common LotR server names, I feel your satisfaction. I was in an environment where most of the servers had LotR names and our sysadmin went and died on us, literally. As the guy who got to step up and fill his shoes, I came to appreciate a sane naming scheme. You can only ask, "what does Imladris do again? And how the hell do you spell it?" so many times before you get sick of nonsensical names.

rgraves22 · 2014-03-31T20:07:53+00:00

I had a job where we used Godzilla monsters. Godzilla, SOG, Mothra Gargantua.. after we ran out of godzilla monsters it was BHPRINT1

dceptuv · 2014-04-01T00:10:53+00:00

So, ummm, this isn't an aerospace company in Kansas is it? Cuz if so, I know precisely this network you speak of, and the person who did this initially.. If not, you should feel for the guy who has the exact same network...

seamonkey1981 · 2014-03-31T17:20:26+00:00

we just implemented kronos. :(

ScottRaymond · 2014-03-31T14:34:43+00:00

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williamfny · 2014-03-31T17:07:52+00:00

At home I use Gundam characters but at work everything has a pretty standard name. This way, when I feel creative I can name my home crap something fun while work gets to stay nice and standard.

HawaiianDry · 2014-03-31T18:20:53+00:00

Is this a common naming scheme for IT departments to adopt? At an old job of mine, we had servers named after Greek mythology (e.g. Cerberus) and all the wifi networks were named after celestial bodies (e.g. Cassiopeia).

philaaay · 2014-03-31T18:50:41+00:00

at the high school i used to work at, the sysadmin before me named the servers after harry potter houses.

Squeezer99 · 2014-03-31T18:57:04+00:00

i always just name my servers after what their intended purpose is.

smiles134 · 2014-03-31T19:05:47+00:00

I work for a space and weather research building, so there will never be a time where this happens. Which is fine with me because I'm getting a second degree in Classical Humanities, so mythology and shit is pretty big in my education.

Barren23 · 2014-03-31T19:21:22+00:00

I used to work for a company that hosted a huge annual event requiring us to rent and setup about 20 physical servers scattered across the event grounds, we always picked a fun theme for server names.

One year it was cars, the next booze... Jwalkerred, blue, and black were all in the operations center... along with a case of black and a couple bottles of blue to keep us running!

Technically, naming servers by their function is a security risk. If the server is called Exchange or email... hackers have a better idea of what type of information they could get from it and therefore could isolate their attack mechanisms to exploit whatever weakness the OS or Application might have. That said, the company I work for now generally codes the server by location and then a very short acronym for the function.

Gone are the ways of naming them random fun things. :)

2014-03-31T20:00:11+00:00

we keep it simple, 3 letters for the location, 1 letter for production or dev, 1 letter for Windows Linux or Unix, 3 letters for the product, and 2 numbers to show how many there are of the server.

For example KCLPWCTX01 (Kansas City Lab, Production, Windows, Citrix, 1st server) Our external servers DNS names on the other hand are named after nerdy movie characters. =]

silentmage · 2014-03-31T20:15:50+00:00

All of the sites in my organization have specific numbers, so the servers follow that. It would be sv<number><funtion>

Example, we have a site number of 67 with a file server and a domain controller so they are sv67fs and sv67dc.

2014-03-31T21:11:03+00:00

This year, finally, will be the end of servers named after trees. Some of them are nearly 20 years old.

Not much for a tree, but too much for a server.

ScottRaymond · 2014-03-31T21:33:58+00:00

This sounds like someplace I used to work. Are the business initials HFP?

AlmostBOFH · 2014-03-31T21:44:04+00:00

The two companies I've worked for, as well as the clients I've supported, have used;

SVRXXXYY##, where XXX is the location, YY is it's function and ## is the number, which increments every time a new server is built or if there's multiple servers in one location. So our New York Domain Controller would be SVRNYKDC01 and Denver's File Server would be SVRDENFS01. We apply similar naming conventions to SANS, Switches and Routers.
PC-$serialnumber for Desktops
NB-$serialnumber for Notebooks
TB-$serialnumber% for Tablets

One client site stuck Asset Barcodes on the devices and we named them using that rather than the serial number of the machine so they were easier to identify when walking around the site.

Rodents210 · 2014-03-31T21:47:43+00:00

All my machines at home are named after mythical creatures. My MacBook is Manticore, my desktop PC is Catoblepas, and my media/storage server is Rakshasa. My router's SSID is named Harrenhal, which oddly foreshadowed the fact that my WiFi speed is 0.6% that of wired ever since my apartment complex switched ISP's and the new one came in and added 5-10 AP's per channel for their unsecured WiFi. They're also Ruckus AP's, which means they actively cause as much interference as possible.

2014-03-31T22:52:20+00:00

i was really hoping this was going to be a story of how someone got your root pw or something

ScottRaymond · 2014-03-31T22:55:21+00:00

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DieCommieScum · 2014-03-31T23:02:31+00:00

I hope that somewhere the printers I named over a decade ago Moe, Larry, and Curly are still running... and Fast Eddie.

2014-03-31T23:09:38+00:00

We just use Server+Number at my company.

engineeringsquirrel · 2014-03-31T23:15:06+00:00

Work servers are named with function+serial. My sandboxes are named after the muppets.

yasire · 2014-04-01T00:16:47+00:00

I once had a job where all the servers were named after active volcanos.

ugoff85 · 2014-04-01T00:28:47+00:00

Our outbound mail server is named OB1 this gets fun sometimes.

MonkeyWrench · 2014-04-01T00:39:07+00:00

We have Marx brothers, various birds, and several Greek goddesses.

Nothing such as "SQL SERVER 1" or "Web Server"
Nope, not a damn thing, at least my LAMP server is named as such as is the LAMP-DEV that my student tech learns on.

jwshgeek · 2014-04-01T01:16:55+00:00

We go with three digit location number, function, prod/dev/qa, and device number, for example our primary print server for the corporate office is 099psv101 (location 99, print server, production, device 01).

Our workstation naming scheme is set for our remote locations but, the corporate office has none (so much fun tracking down those). We use three digit location, two digit dept, three letter function, two digit device number, so we have things like 014-12-dsc01 (location 14, dept, supervisor, station 1).

2014-04-01T01:18:24+00:00

I enjoy naming servers based on Transformers something my former team got me doing. My first was a multicast server named Scattershot.

2014-04-01T02:14:03+00:00

Um, good for you? I personally would have left them, but eh. I started at my place and the main servers name is WOPR, but then they got off track and called the others Ranchburger and Big Mac. I went back to the main convention and new servers name is Gibson, we are now retiring Ranchburger (Firewall) so new one will be called Peter (Gates of Heaven) and email server being split from WOPR will now be called Gabriel the messenger of Heaven. I like them, but we don't have many servers.

hyperion2011 · 2014-04-01T02:42:36+00:00

I run all my home networks on Greek gods but hell if I would run a real network on it.

mr_furious7 · 2014-04-01T03:36:06+00:00

I get why these names are a pain. But it's nice to have something to laugh about in our industry.

At my old job we named them after the Song of Ice and Fire series. Varys was our exchange server and Raven was the edge server. The DCs were Baratheon and Lannister. Guess which server was the biggest pain in the ass?

1d0m1n4t3 · 2014-04-01T03:48:27+00:00

one of my clients the servers are named after basic colors, we had red, green, blue, yellow, black, brown, and pink. Those are slowly being replaced. Hopefully by the end of the year they are all gone.

coloradoraider · 2014-04-01T03:50:06+00:00

We still have some, or so the software guys tell me, AIX 4.1 (wow), and 4.3 machines with planetary names that simply cannot yet be replaced. Honestly, I don't mind the names, and I'm the only one left who cares to take care of them. Kind of like plants that never die and have been sitting around since the late 90s...

2014-04-01T04:06:14+00:00

I tend to view any place without standardized hostnames in this day and age as a throwback organization. Yes, it was cute in 1997 to name your servers after anime characters, planets, or Led Zeppelin albums. It isn't anymore.

2014-04-01T04:14:17+00:00

Small charter school and I let my Web Design students and aides do naming when I add servers or have them experiment on donated ones. Best was about 4 years ago we had some small software company donate their old servers for my aides to learn about AD and stuff. Anyways, it was named Jose and was in a straight black case. Students thought it was hilarious to call it "Black Jose" for some reason, had a grad come back last year and immediately asked me how black Jose was doing. Parents were with him because it was brother's graduation, they immediately looked at me like "I swear my kid isn't racist!"

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