pick a fucking name

[rone]

So, we used to have an incredibly obnoxious and cumbersome naming scheme, where the first letter was either S for system or N for network, then a four-digit location code, which started with 1 for East Coast and Europe and 2 for West Coast and Asia-Pacific. Then a 3-letter code that gave a vague hint regarding the machine's function or model, then a 2-digit serial number. Thus, s2009mgw06 is the sixth mail gateway machine at location 2009 (our current colo).

The new and improved naming scheme is: one letter, P for production, D for development, Q for QA; a two-digit location code; a mandatory 3-letter, "vague hint" code; an optional 3-letter supplementary code; and a 2-digit serial number. Thus, p01dnsi03 is the third 'i'nternal DNS server at location 01 (the new colo).

Someone explain to me how the latter is an improvement. I really, really loathe this.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The article that dr_memory posted argues that arbitrariness with no reference to function is exactly what you want, since functions change too. (It also reminded me that I hadn't set up Ghostscript on my system yet since the last hard drive crash, so now I have again.)

At my office we've got a lot of machines named after gods, heroes and historical figures of antiquity (hera and plato are in my cube), and some others named after comic-book heroes. Typical stuff. And then there are a bunch of other machines that, for reasons I'm not at liberty to go into, have systematic letter-number combinations, and I can never remember the numbers.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Functions can change, but usually that means we're going to rebuild the machine, so you might as well rename it at that point.

I was fine with the notion of naming your desktop whatever the hell you want, but the Desktop cluebies are naming the Windows desktop and laptop machines "usernameNN" because otherwise they're unable to find out which machines are infected with a worm. So i had to give up on that one.

What every company needs is a good database that correlates hostname, function, and location, and is easily accessible and updated. Technically, you can do all that in DNS with HINFO and TXT records, but the front end doesn't exist and would be a bitch. We have something like that, but it's updated by the Sykes helpdesk in Manila, and it's essentially useful only to them.