4 ms·

We have several very very large clusters - as you say, the names become problematic. Currently we are using a "code" to ID servers. - 2 letter geographical lo

by ErrantX 16y ago

We have several very very large clusters - as you say, the names become problematic. Currently we are using a "code" to ID servers. - 2 letter geographical location code - 2 letter building code - 4 number computer ID (e.g. LIMB0001) This was after someone had to spend nearly a whole day working out where computer CU2043 was located :)

lsc 16y ago
yeah. every time i've worked on multi-thousand box clusters you always did operations on sets of servers... and you'd grab those sets using a tool that would pull from a database. if you got an alert for a particular server, you'd go back into the database and you could then pull up all details you have for that server, including how to access it physically or remotely. My current setup is approaching the 'need a database' scale... (we're at around 60 physical servers I've gotta deal with, if you count co-lo customer boxes, and maybe another 20 virtuals we manage. We've got around 1300 customer virtuals that I don't name or manage. so dealing with that database, either by massaging freeside until it can do what we need to do, or writing something else is one of our next projects.)
Periodic 16y ago
Whenever the list of systems gets too large I find I need to come up with a very boring scheme like that. At the university where I worked I set them up as: - 6-letter department abbreviation - 3-letter group abbreviation - 1-letter role/type identifier (e.g. w for workstation, s for server, m for mobile) - 3-number sequence number, with the highest order digit often grouping related systems together. It worked out pretty well and it made the systems easy to figure out from the hostname alone. I like the idea of geographical names, but I would get a little annoyed when I moved a system from one building to another.
theBobMcCormick 16y ago
Couldn't they have just used the IP address of the computer to figure out what subnet the computer was on?
- lsc 16y ago
  many people have big, flat layer two networks... e.g. one subnet might span locations. Now, personally, I think this is a bad idea in nearly all cases, but many other people disagree with me. The thing is, vendors of expensive MPLS gear like to sell this idea of 'location independent subnets' to upper management as a way to 'simplify' the network. Now maybe it's just 'cause I don't know layer two well, but god damn it is so much easier to troubleshoot layer three problems than to troubleshoot layer two problems, so I strongly favor making the subnets location and/or rack dependent.
  - theBobMcCormick 16y ago
    The very idea makes the network engineer in me cringe. There are so many good reasons to establish layer 3 boundaries before crossing any relatively low speed or high latency connections.
- ErrantX 16y ago
  No, we don't control the network infrastructure at most of the locations - so two computers could easily have the same IP address on the local internal network as a computer several hundred miles away.
  - theBobMcCormick 16y ago
    Unless you're nating between those locations, that's not possible.
    - ErrantX 16y ago
      It's a distributed cluster - I was trying to avoid being too specific for that reason :) my post was just about our practical example of naming many many computers

by ErrantX 16y ago

lsc 16y ago

yeah. every time i've worked on multi-thousand box clusters you always did operations on sets of servers... and you'd grab those sets using a tool that would pull from a database. if you got an alert for a particular server, you'd go back into the database and you could then pull up all details you have for that server, including how to access it physically or remotely. My current setup is approaching the 'need a database' scale... (we're at around 60 physical servers I've gotta deal with, if you count co-lo customer boxes, and maybe another 20 virtuals we manage. We've got around 1300 customer virtuals that I don't name or manage. so dealing with that database, either by massaging freeside until it can do what we need to do, or writing something else is one of our next projects.)

Periodic 16y ago

Whenever the list of systems gets too large I find I need to come up with a very boring scheme like that. At the university where I worked I set them up as: - 6-letter department abbreviation - 3-letter group abbreviation - 1-letter role/type identifier (e.g. w for workstation, s for server, m for mobile) - 3-number sequence number, with the highest order digit often grouping related systems together. It worked out pretty well and it made the systems easy to figure out from the hostname alone. I like the idea of geographical names, but I would get a little annoyed when I moved a system from one building to another.

theBobMcCormick 16y ago

Couldn't they have just used the IP address of the computer to figure out what subnet the computer was on?

lsc 16y ago
many people have big, flat layer two networks... e.g. one subnet might span locations. Now, personally, I think this is a bad idea in nearly all cases, but many other people disagree with me. The thing is, vendors of expensive MPLS gear like to sell this idea of 'location independent subnets' to upper management as a way to 'simplify' the network. Now maybe it's just 'cause I don't know layer two well, but god damn it is so much easier to troubleshoot layer three problems than to troubleshoot layer two problems, so I strongly favor making the subnets location and/or rack dependent.
- theBobMcCormick 16y ago
  The very idea makes the network engineer in me cringe. There are so many good reasons to establish layer 3 boundaries before crossing any relatively low speed or high latency connections.
ErrantX 16y ago
No, we don't control the network infrastructure at most of the locations - so two computers could easily have the same IP address on the local internal network as a computer several hundred miles away.
- theBobMcCormick 16y ago
  Unless you're nating between those locations, that's not possible.
  - ErrantX 16y ago
    It's a distributed cluster - I was trying to avoid being too specific for that reason :) my post was just about our practical example of naming many many computers