3 ms·

Not sure your comment is intended on proving a con of naming servers as random strings, but honestly I would consider that a positive. If hostnames are actual w

by kbar13 12y ago

Not sure your comment is intended on proving a con of naming servers as random strings, but honestly I would consider that a positive. If hostnames are actual words, then people are able (and sometimes incentivized) to transmit them verbally. This can lead to communication issues. If the hostname is randomized, then the logical thing would be to copy and paste the hostname and send it off over the wire, which would theoretically cut down on human error.

peterwwillis 12y ago
The human then has to write down a long string of unrelated numbers and letters and track it down somewhere in the server room. Both are time-consuming and error prone. It's annoying enough to try to find "snowwhite" amongst 40 servers in each of 40 racks; trying to scan the list of names for "ABC123XYZ987" when none of the name correlates with any useful information would be absolutely maddening. Jesus christ, I can just imagine for every sever looking at the name on a sticky note, looking at a tag name, and then looking again at the sticky note and back to the tag name, possibly a third time, just to make sure it wasn't off by one number or letter or something. Repeat for thousands of servers? Euuggh! Besides the poor cage monkey having to deal with that crap, when you're fighting fires in the ops room you need to be able to refer to a handful of server names quickly. You can't be copying-and-pasting names to people, looking information up every 2 seconds because you can't possibly memorize it. We are human beings and so we need human interfaces to information.
- thezilch 12y ago
  If we're naming racks to be serviceable, seems easier to have numeric rows, dash, alphanumeric cabinets, dash, numeric racks. 3-K-7 seems extremely better than disney-snowwhite-dopey. And your labels should hold the breadcrumb: [3] (row), [3-K] (cabinet), [3-K-7] (rack). The other benefit is not having to guess where these things are (or having to dictate this very same information to land someone near "dopey").
  - peterwwillis 12y ago
    Can't start with a number or you won't be able to use it as a host DNS record. But yes, numbers and letters that correlate to significant information would totally be useful compared to a random string, with the caveat that putting rack/row information in a hostname would mean changing all the records relating to that host every time you moved it around in a rack. (which might be the best way to mandate that the damn NOC engineers record where they moved the goddamn host to...)
    - ghshephard 12y ago
      I'm curious - what's wrong with starting DNS A records off with numbers? dig +short 4test.shephard.org 4.2.2.2
      - lmz 12y ago
        Illegal according to the RFC syntax for a DNS "label": http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1035#section-2.3.1 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1035#section-2.3.1
        yuubi 12y ago
        One aspect of host name syntax is hereby changed: the restriction on the first character is relaxed to allow either a letter or a digit. Host software MUST support this more liberal syntax. -- http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1123#section-2 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1123#section-2
        aalbertson 12y ago
        thank goodness, how else would 4chan have been allowed to exist on teh interwebz?
- ghshephard 12y ago
  The fix for that is don't have the cage monkey care about server "names", but instead physical servers. I've done this, and it works very, very well with third parties. You simply give them their work-order, and it consists of working on particular physical devices. I.E. Row 10, Rack 11, RU-15 - Serial Number 103527382 - Replace Hard Drive. Row 13, Rack 9, RU 6 - Serial Number 103528942 - Replace Power Supply. etc... The work orders are generated from your CMDB, which tracks things like serial numbers and physical locations. As organizations grow, this is eventually where they all end up (after multiple iterations of other less scalable systems)
  - peterwwillis 12y ago
    That helps you track it down but it doesn't help you relate it to another human in a non-location context. Hence why dp-t75x-013 is nice ("oh hey, it's that dell precision T7500 that keeps segfaulting, maybe the RAM's bad..." versus "oh hey, it's that Serial 103528942 that keeps segfaulting"). Good to name it something relatively simple to pronounce, too ["deepeetee seventyfiveecks thirteen"]. A less common problem is serials/macs/tag numbers become duplicated when you buy enough servers...
    - ghshephard 12y ago
      Depends on the size of the organization and how many servers they have and who you are working with. In the above case, the question was how to direct technicians to gear - and, specifying a physical location and a faceplate label (Serial Number or what have you) does the job. In the case of Humans - they usually have cnames for the function they are interested in anyways. I do work on about 4500 servers - and I couldn't tell you the name of a single one of them (though, I note they have some long convoluted DNS PTR, even harder to understand than a serial number) - But, I have a ton of cnames when I want to login to a particular customers server (based on customer, production/test/dev/fste, function). Teams that need to do maintenance on servers have tools that group them based on role, location, data center, etc... They never actually "ssh" into a server the way I might. A lot depends on whether you are talking about scales of 100+, 1000+, or 10,000+ servers (or network devices for that matter) At each stage you start to lose more and more of human naming convention, and move everything into a Configuration Management Database (CMDB)
pyre 12y ago
> This can lead to communication issues. That was part of the reason for that curated list of words that they were recommending in the article. > If the hostname is randomized, then the logical thing would be to copy and paste the hostname and send it off over the wire Eventually that chain of communication will need to end in an action. Not all actions are just "copy-paste it into a box." What if I know that the server is a "Rack #3", but now I need to look at labels on the actual servers to find server 'SDFssdfa4324tdfgfg"? It's a lot easier to grok server "crimson".
drivingmenuts 12y ago
It's all fun and games until the actual server is on fire. Bob: "Frank? Which server did you say was on fire?" Frank: "It's the email server. The name is ..." Bob: "Frank - you know the rule. Send it, don't say it." Frank: "Uh ... I can ... maybe text it to you?" Bob: "Insecure." Frank: "Uh ... pigeon?" Bob: "The intern ate the last one." Frank: "Uh, carve it on the intern's back?" Bob: "Tattoo it. Safer that way." Frank: "OK, give me an hour." Bob: "Hey, server's burning, you know. Ain't gonna last forever ..."
- kbar13 12y ago
  uh what? Keeping your hostnames secret, like dropping ICMP, is useless.

by kbar13 12y ago

peterwwillis 12y ago

The human then has to write down a long string of unrelated numbers and letters and track it down somewhere in the server room. Both are time-consuming and error prone. It's annoying enough to try to find "snowwhite" amongst 40 servers in each of 40 racks; trying to scan the list of names for "ABC123XYZ987" when none of the name correlates with any useful information would be absolutely maddening. Jesus christ, I can just imagine for every sever looking at the name on a sticky note, looking at a tag name, and then looking again at the sticky note and back to the tag name, possibly a third time, just to make sure it wasn't off by one number or letter or something. Repeat for thousands of servers? Euuggh! Besides the poor cage monkey having to deal with that crap, when you're fighting fires in the ops room you need to be able to refer to a handful of server names quickly. You can't be copying-and-pasting names to people, looking information up every 2 seconds because you can't possibly memorize it. We are human beings and so we need human interfaces to information.

thezilch 12y ago
If we're naming racks to be serviceable, seems easier to have numeric rows, dash, alphanumeric cabinets, dash, numeric racks. 3-K-7 seems extremely better than disney-snowwhite-dopey. And your labels should hold the breadcrumb: [3] (row), [3-K] (cabinet), [3-K-7] (rack). The other benefit is not having to guess where these things are (or having to dictate this very same information to land someone near "dopey").
- peterwwillis 12y ago
  Can't start with a number or you won't be able to use it as a host DNS record. But yes, numbers and letters that correlate to significant information would totally be useful compared to a random string, with the caveat that putting rack/row information in a hostname would mean changing all the records relating to that host every time you moved it around in a rack. (which might be the best way to mandate that the damn NOC engineers record where they moved the goddamn host to...)
  - ghshephard 12y ago
    I'm curious - what's wrong with starting DNS A records off with numbers? dig +short 4test.shephard.org 4.2.2.2
    - lmz 12y ago
      Illegal according to the RFC syntax for a DNS "label": http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1035#section-2.3.1 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1035#section-2.3.1
      - yuubi 12y ago
        One aspect of host name syntax is hereby changed: the restriction on the first character is relaxed to allow either a letter or a digit. Host software MUST support this more liberal syntax. -- http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1123#section-2 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1123#section-2
        aalbertson 12y ago
        thank goodness, how else would 4chan have been allowed to exist on teh interwebz?
ghshephard 12y ago
The fix for that is don't have the cage monkey care about server "names", but instead physical servers. I've done this, and it works very, very well with third parties. You simply give them their work-order, and it consists of working on particular physical devices. I.E. Row 10, Rack 11, RU-15 - Serial Number 103527382 - Replace Hard Drive. Row 13, Rack 9, RU 6 - Serial Number 103528942 - Replace Power Supply. etc... The work orders are generated from your CMDB, which tracks things like serial numbers and physical locations. As organizations grow, this is eventually where they all end up (after multiple iterations of other less scalable systems)
- peterwwillis 12y ago
  That helps you track it down but it doesn't help you relate it to another human in a non-location context. Hence why dp-t75x-013 is nice ("oh hey, it's that dell precision T7500 that keeps segfaulting, maybe the RAM's bad..." versus "oh hey, it's that Serial 103528942 that keeps segfaulting"). Good to name it something relatively simple to pronounce, too ["deepeetee seventyfiveecks thirteen"]. A less common problem is serials/macs/tag numbers become duplicated when you buy enough servers...
  - ghshephard 12y ago
    Depends on the size of the organization and how many servers they have and who you are working with. In the above case, the question was how to direct technicians to gear - and, specifying a physical location and a faceplate label (Serial Number or what have you) does the job. In the case of Humans - they usually have cnames for the function they are interested in anyways. I do work on about 4500 servers - and I couldn't tell you the name of a single one of them (though, I note they have some long convoluted DNS PTR, even harder to understand than a serial number) - But, I have a ton of cnames when I want to login to a particular customers server (based on customer, production/test/dev/fste, function). Teams that need to do maintenance on servers have tools that group them based on role, location, data center, etc... They never actually "ssh" into a server the way I might. A lot depends on whether you are talking about scales of 100+, 1000+, or 10,000+ servers (or network devices for that matter) At each stage you start to lose more and more of human naming convention, and move everything into a Configuration Management Database (CMDB)

pyre 12y ago

> This can lead to communication issues. That was part of the reason for that curated list of words that they were recommending in the article. > If the hostname is randomized, then the logical thing would be to copy and paste the hostname and send it off over the wire Eventually that chain of communication will need to end in an action. Not all actions are just "copy-paste it into a box." What if I know that the server is a "Rack #3", but now I need to look at labels on the actual servers to find server 'SDFssdfa4324tdfgfg"? It's a lot easier to grok server "crimson".

drivingmenuts 12y ago

It's all fun and games until the actual server is on fire. Bob: "Frank? Which server did you say was on fire?" Frank: "It's the email server. The name is ..." Bob: "Frank - you know the rule. Send it, don't say it." Frank: "Uh ... I can ... maybe text it to you?" Bob: "Insecure." Frank: "Uh ... pigeon?" Bob: "The intern ate the last one." Frank: "Uh, carve it on the intern's back?" Bob: "Tattoo it. Safer that way." Frank: "OK, give me an hour." Bob: "Hey, server's burning, you know. Ain't gonna last forever ..."

kbar13 12y ago
uh what? Keeping your hostnames secret, like dropping ICMP, is useless.