3 ms·

I stopped reading halfway through the shop example. When you move the machine out of the shop and give it a completely new role, rename it. I call my webserve

by Pxtl 9y ago

I stopped reading halfway through the shop example. When you move the machine out of the shop and give it a completely new role, rename it. I call my webserver webserver. I never get why there's such a huge gap between admins and programmers on this. Programmers have sane, intelligent naming conventions beaten into them, and yet when I ask a sysadmin what server the Wiki is running on, half the time the answer is something like "legolas". That name would never make it through my code review.

sdrothrock 9y ago
> I call my webserver webserver. Agreed. Nothing confuses me more than finding a network with a bunch of machines named for roles that they don't fulfill. Even more infuriating is when you have a network like that, but the new machines have names that refer to the old ones -- so for example, the webserver may be "webserver," but the new replacement may be "real-webserver" and then the replacement of that may be "real-webserver-replacement."
- dpark 9y ago
  This is precisely why calling the webserver "webserver" isn't a great idea. The guy who called the webserver "webserver" seems kind of lazy. This guy probably isn't going to bother renaming it when it turns into "webserver plus some other services". And if later "webserver" stops hosting the actual webserver because it's overloaded, this guy isn't going to lose sleep calling the new webserver host "real-webserver".
- Pxtl 9y ago
  Imho, there's nothing wrong with throwing a number on the end to denote our 3rd webserver. And obviously, the name is only its primary function. If a sever wears 2 hats, maybe the secondary function isn't in the name. That's still more infromative than "the git repo is on huitzilipotchtli".
  - KozmoNau7 9y ago
    I'm on laptop06, desktop06, phone06, printer02, htpc02 and nas01 at the moment, incrementing the suffix when I replace a machine or add a new one. I tack on "-linux", "-windows", "-android" and so on when appropriate.
davidw 9y ago
If you're not going the "cattle" route (see other comments), I think the best strategy is to have a unique name "olympus" or whatever, and then use role aliases. That means if you take olympus and repurpose it from webserving, you still know which computer it actually is, but you swap the roles around so that when you just want to connect to the mail server, you can do that via the alias.
jeremiep 9y ago
I remember in a previous job the IT guys started using superhero names for the machines. They were even grouped by which universe the heroes come from (marvel, dc, etc). Even when they did descriptive names, it was all backwards like <instanceID>-<env>-<role>-<project> yielding things like 2-dev-db-something. Trying to explain how that made sorting machines by name impossible was alien speak to them. I think the reason programmers are better with names is that we get to name many, many more things. Variables, functions, parameters, namespaces, endpoints, the list just goes on both in the small and the large.
djur 9y ago
The reason for that is that historically a single domain hosted a wide variety of services and users, so there wasn't a single meaningful name to give it, and giving it a memorable name was important for the users who relied on that name. I don't think there's such a big gap there, either. It's not uncommon for developers to give large, general-purpose applications nondescriptive code names. This actually tends to be useful when trying to distinguish the names that marketing gives a product (which can change) with the names of the applications that back it (which shouldn't).
kbenson 9y ago
> half the time the answer is something like "legolas". I think it also often depends on how many machines your sysadmins have to manage, and how many they had to manage prior to this naming scheme. Once you've experienced the pain of too many odd names, and trying to figure out how to map them to roles, you don't generally want to go back, in my experience.
cat199 9y ago
> I call my webserver webserver. which is precisely why the 'www.<domain>.<tld>' convention is so widespread..

by Pxtl 9y ago

sdrothrock 9y ago

> I call my webserver webserver. Agreed. Nothing confuses me more than finding a network with a bunch of machines named for roles that they don't fulfill. Even more infuriating is when you have a network like that, but the new machines have names that refer to the old ones -- so for example, the webserver may be "webserver," but the new replacement may be "real-webserver" and then the replacement of that may be "real-webserver-replacement."

dpark 9y ago
This is precisely why calling the webserver "webserver" isn't a great idea. The guy who called the webserver "webserver" seems kind of lazy. This guy probably isn't going to bother renaming it when it turns into "webserver plus some other services". And if later "webserver" stops hosting the actual webserver because it's overloaded, this guy isn't going to lose sleep calling the new webserver host "real-webserver".
Pxtl 9y ago
Imho, there's nothing wrong with throwing a number on the end to denote our 3rd webserver. And obviously, the name is only its primary function. If a sever wears 2 hats, maybe the secondary function isn't in the name. That's still more infromative than "the git repo is on huitzilipotchtli".
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  I'm on laptop06, desktop06, phone06, printer02, htpc02 and nas01 at the moment, incrementing the suffix when I replace a machine or add a new one. I tack on "-linux", "-windows", "-android" and so on when appropriate.

davidw 9y ago

If you're not going the "cattle" route (see other comments), I think the best strategy is to have a unique name "olympus" or whatever, and then use role aliases. That means if you take olympus and repurpose it from webserving, you still know which computer it actually is, but you swap the roles around so that when you just want to connect to the mail server, you can do that via the alias.

jeremiep 9y ago

I remember in a previous job the IT guys started using superhero names for the machines. They were even grouped by which universe the heroes come from (marvel, dc, etc). Even when they did descriptive names, it was all backwards like <instanceID>-<env>-<role>-<project> yielding things like 2-dev-db-something. Trying to explain how that made sorting machines by name impossible was alien speak to them. I think the reason programmers are better with names is that we get to name many, many more things. Variables, functions, parameters, namespaces, endpoints, the list just goes on both in the small and the large.

djur 9y ago

The reason for that is that historically a single domain hosted a wide variety of services and users, so there wasn't a single meaningful name to give it, and giving it a memorable name was important for the users who relied on that name. I don't think there's such a big gap there, either. It's not uncommon for developers to give large, general-purpose applications nondescriptive code names. This actually tends to be useful when trying to distinguish the names that marketing gives a product (which can change) with the names of the applications that back it (which shouldn't).

kbenson 9y ago

> half the time the answer is something like "legolas". I think it also often depends on how many machines your sysadmins have to manage, and how many they had to manage prior to this naming scheme. Once you've experienced the pain of too many odd names, and trying to figure out how to map them to roles, you don't generally want to go back, in my experience.

cat199 9y ago

> I call my webserver webserver. which is precisely why the 'www.<domain>.<tld>' convention is so widespread..