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I really like the functional naming part of this, but I don't like the idea of using random names.. I think that server names must be functional otherwise you w

I really like the functional naming part of this, but I don't like the idea of using random names.. I think that server names must be functional otherwise you will tend to think of them as an abstract box that, if you just install that little extra package, will be a fine webserver on top of that mailer. Don't do it! If you're labeling hardware and need multiple functions, use virtualisation or containers, and then the host is named after that (e.g. we use Ganeti, so gnt-01, or say kube-01). At home, I name machines after inspiring political figures and while I like the naming, it does discourage me into treating those machines as cattle, which I should do more.

anarcat 6y ago
oh and forgot to mention.. at my current job, there was this practice of naming servers after onions (I'll let you guess where that is). I had no idea how many kinds of onions there were turns out there are many, especially if you start to take in Latin names and translations... But then I need to learn how to spell colchicifolium, and neriniflorum, and no, those two are not related (or are they) and what does meronense do again? and oh yeah corsicum is the replica of one of those... Those naming conventions are cool until you start to document your stuff properly and start being serious about training and including new people. Then you should focus on meaningful, easy to remember, type, and generate, names.
curtis3389 6y ago
I prefer to have mostly meaningless names for machines, and then having more names for them in DNS for their various functions. That way the functions can be moved about the machines and if that's what you care about, then that's how you refer to them (deploy the app Foobar to web01 and web02), but when a machine goes down, you can shout, "clark is down!" web01/dns01/sto01 being down only means the service is down, whereas clark being down is something more severe. I manage my stuff with Ansible, which makes all this pretty easy.
- anarcat 6y ago
  here if "fsn-node-01" is down, we know it's a major ganeti node that dies. if "unifolium" dies, ... can you guess what happens? at first I couldn't either, but then I learned it's an old KVM node hosting a bunch of virtual machines, and it means pain, definitely something severe. yet it's not meaningfully different from "corsicum" dying (which is "just" a VM). adding meaning to machines reduces the cognitive burden (for oldies) and discovery burden (for newcomers) of figuring out what is what. that assumes you don't run services bare-metal. if you do, then maybe it makes sense to use meaningful names for those, but in general, I strongly try to avoid doing that anyways... and if I do, having a functional name for that metal is mostly harmless: if the function changes, the name changes, and then I need to do a name change, which I allow for. but that is rare, because if i dedicate full metal for a function, you can bet it won't be readily available for other purposes...

anarcat 6y ago

oh and forgot to mention.. at my current job, there was this practice of naming servers after onions (I'll let you guess where that is). I had no idea how many kinds of onions there were turns out there are many, especially if you start to take in Latin names and translations... But then I need to learn how to spell colchicifolium, and neriniflorum, and no, those two are not related (or are they) and what does meronense do again? and oh yeah corsicum is the replica of one of those... Those naming conventions are cool until you start to document your stuff properly and start being serious about training and including new people. Then you should focus on meaningful, easy to remember, type, and generate, names.

curtis3389 6y ago

I prefer to have mostly meaningless names for machines, and then having more names for them in DNS for their various functions. That way the functions can be moved about the machines and if that's what you care about, then that's how you refer to them (deploy the app Foobar to web01 and web02), but when a machine goes down, you can shout, "clark is down!" web01/dns01/sto01 being down only means the service is down, whereas clark being down is something more severe. I manage my stuff with Ansible, which makes all this pretty easy.

anarcat 6y ago
here if "fsn-node-01" is down, we know it's a major ganeti node that dies. if "unifolium" dies, ... can you guess what happens? at first I couldn't either, but then I learned it's an old KVM node hosting a bunch of virtual machines, and it means pain, definitely something severe. yet it's not meaningfully different from "corsicum" dying (which is "just" a VM). adding meaning to machines reduces the cognitive burden (for oldies) and discovery burden (for newcomers) of figuring out what is what. that assumes you don't run services bare-metal. if you do, then maybe it makes sense to use meaningful names for those, but in general, I strongly try to avoid doing that anyways... and if I do, having a functional name for that metal is mostly harmless: if the function changes, the name changes, and then I need to do a name change, which I allow for. but that is rare, because if i dedicate full metal for a function, you can bet it won't be readily available for other purposes...