I’ve ended up with a number of machines on my network, and a need to name them all in a somewhat logical way. For several years I had them named after the planets, which worked well until the PCs for myself, my girlfriend, servers and Raspberry Pi’s quickly summed up to more than the eight planets. I’ve broadened it somewhat to include any Greek/Roman mythological figure, but the system is definitely not as clean as it used to be.

Do you have a coordinated naming theme for your machines?

  • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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    1 year ago

    Depending on the size of the machine I’ll call it big/large/huge/small/Lil then a human name like John. BigJohn is my main server and hopefully one day he can get an upgrade and become large John.

    • reddthis@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      This, but it’s all suggestive names, such as:

      Big Johnson, Small Richard, lil Peter, Huge Willy, etc.

  • iMeddles@infosec.pub
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    1 year ago

    Every machine is named after what it does (although I do 1337-ify the names, because I’m still a late 90s IRC teen at heart). If you’ve ever been onboarded into a sysadmin role where all the machines are named with whatever whimsical naming scheme each department chose, you’ll fast develop a visceral hatred for non-descriptive naming schemes. The fifth time you get a ticket saying something like ‘Hedwig is down’ and you have to go crawling through three layers of linked files on SharePoint to find what and where ‘Hedwig’ is, you’ll be ready to beat the person who named it to death, and that attitude tends to persist to your home naming scheme :p

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      The fifth time you get a ticket saying something like ‘Hedwig is down’

      If only there was an excellent database to store where Hedwig.bthl4.sea.wa.goliath.corp was and maybe include an alias so you know it’s NNTP5.goliath.corp also.

      I shall invent one. It shall replicated and synchronize quickly. It shall interface and accept changes and share data. It will be simple to query so everyone can use it. I shall call it DNS . If people get snippy, I shall next invent an HS record.

      Learn to use the tools, man. It’ll help you adhere to a 40-year-old RFC on naming things.

      • iMeddles@infosec.pub
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        1 year ago

        Yes, if you’ve built the network from scratch that works. Retrofitting it into an existing network however is a massive piece of work when you don’t have that single source of truth to start with however. On networks I’ve built sensibly, I’ll happily give people whatever CNAME they want to refer to their machine, but the machines actual name is descriptive, not the other way round.

      • I’ll get right on rearchitecting the dns infrastructure of a large sprawling corporation, with mountains of technical debt from decades of acquisitions where they just mashed shit together. I’m sure that project will get approved.

        Don’t be condescending, man.

        • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          Well I’m glad you know it’s there!

          I can’t comment on your particular technical debt, as I’m not very psychic. I like how you say not to be condescending and require me to be psychic. That’s cool, but I bet you’re stressed.

          Have a good week.

  • marmarama@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Ungulates. Because who doesn’t like a hoofed animal?

    My client machines are even-toed ungulates (order Artiodactyla) and my servers/IoT machines are odd-toed (order Perissodactyla). I’m typing this on Gazelle. My router is called Quagga, both after the extinct zebra subspecies and the routing protocol software (I don’t use it any more but hey, it’s a router).

    • Siegfried@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Well, now i need to know which ones are and what particular feature of the pcs reminds you of them

  • rosa666parks@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Anime girls. I want to change but I’m too far gone to have a random name

    Rei - main pc

    Asuna - main server

    Milim - plex

    Aqua - laptop

    Darkness - first plex (the drives failed and lost everything rip)

    Rem - raspi (pihole)

    Ram - second raspi (home assistant)

  • thelastknowngod@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    node-0 node-1 node-2 …

    Everything runs kubernetes so the names are mostly irrelevant.

    Years ago I worked at a company who named everything after WoW characters. I wished murder was legal in those days.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      “did you just kill LUN11 or LUN01? Oh no! Let’s hope the backup is okay!” – paraphrased from 9 years ago.

      You know what’s worse than an image you can hold in your head and know you need to work on Gandalf and not Shaggy? “were we decomming uswablsalc108, or was is uswablslca018? Better check again,” and remember why telephone numbers were only 7 digits long.

  • niisyth@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I’m incredibly boring. I name them with the company/model name. And what role they have appended.

    • bufordt@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Cute naming schemes are for people who don’t have lots of servers. At my work we have over 700 servers. We’re not naming them after something arbitrary, we’re being descriptive.

  • TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub
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    1 year ago

    Servers (physical or virtual) get named based on usage: host-lab-01, vpn-guest-name, nas-01, proxmox-01, etc.

    My wife’s laptops get named [her name]-[model].

    My machines (physical or virtual) get named after fairies from Pixie Hollow.

    Writing this out makes me think I did my wife’s machines dirty, though. Should have named them after fairies as well.

  • simshady@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    A friend of mine names all his hosts afer famous battleships, his dad names every host after Star Trek ships and their wireless networks are all named after LOTR locations.

    As for me, each hostname consists of the device type and the location of the host, no matter if it’s local or a vps in a datacenter somewhere.

  • ErwinLottemann@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    Discworld characters. My storage servers name is Luggage, my phone is ‘Ig’, the vacuum is named after a monk.

  • TheGreenGolem@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Hell-related, mixed from Greek mythology and Christian mythology.

    • Hades: THE main server. I mean it knows and controls everything
    • Charon: the router. Self-explanatory
    • Hell: my laptop. Its brand is Dell. It’s where all this started.
    • Limbo: my other laptop
  • SupremeFuzzler@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I usually go with characters from the Discworld series. So far I’ve had a Rincewind, Ridcully, Twoflower, Weatherwax, Ponder, Librarian, Luggage, and Hex, plus a router called “The Clacks”. Really ought to get Vimes and crew into the mix, now that I think of it… maybe the next one will be Angua or Carrot.

  • EpicFailGuy@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    @aquova

    Call me boring but

    First 3 = OS/appliance type
    Next 3 = Purpose/role
    Last Character = Environment / lane
    (numbers added if more than one)

    Having a server called “Enterprise” is cool … but when I get an email saying WINNASP or RHLFTPQ are down, it’s much more useful and descriptive.