Re: [lopsa-discuss] Re: [SAGE] Naming conventions for servers, network gear, etc.

["Rodrick Brown" <rodrick.brown@gmail.com>]

On 1/8/07, Lamont Granquist <lamont@scriptkiddie.org> wrote:
>
>
> > At 1:55 AM -0500 1/7/07, Rodrick Brown wrote:
> >>  The OS type indication in a hostname makes automation/scripting very
> >>  simple across the board. I have not found a single issue with this
> >>  scheme over the years please enlightenment on where exactly this can
> >>  be problematic so far you've stated nothing but religious reasons.
> >>  Brad I really value your input so please don't take this response as
> >>  an attack in anyway I just want to see where exactly you feel this can
> >>  be an issue.
> >
> > Why encode the OS in the name, when the OS might need to change overnight?
> > Why should the change in the OS require a change in the function or the name?
>
> Yup, maintain a centralized database which records OS type and other
> queriable information about the machines.  Have most of that information
> updated by the end hosts on provisioning and via appropriate cronjobs.
>
> For your configuration management use something like cfengine rather than
> rdist so that you can use labels in the config file which are expanded and
> set correctly on the end-host based on inspected ostype.  That elminates
> the need to use some kind of macro generation around your rdistfile to set
> labels composed of all the linux machines in the fleet.
>
> For doing remote scripting query the mysql database.  While you can do an
> axfr zone transfer and grep out the linux boxes from DNS using your scheme
> that's really a poor way to use DNS as a fleet management database.  It is
> ultimitely much less flexible and is overloading DNS with information that
> you don't always need to know when you're using DNS.
>

This is pretty much the standard in any environment with more than a
100 or so servers, the ability to to identify the server's owner, OS
type, and location just from the host name alone is very useful. I've
yet to see a solid reason why embedding this information into the
hostname inst advantageous. I don't know about you guys but I almost
never have to rebuild an OS with a different OS type so this isn't an
issue of much concern.

-- 
Rodrick R. Brown