RE: Machine naming convention

["Gittler, Xev" <Xev.Gittler@gs.com>]

On Wednesday, August 05, 1998 4:48 PM, Jeffrey Roberts
[SMTP:jeffr@interlog.com] wrote:
> We are in the process of integrating several types of OS's, UNIX
> and NT, in our company and we would like to standardize on a machine
> naming convention.  Up until now we have used elements of the periodic
> table, car names, personal names, etc... for machine names.
> 
> One suggestion is to use "location" + "userid" as a machine name,
> eg: "torjdr", or "nyvito"
> 

Its amazing, but naming machines tends to be a religious subject. The 5
worst fights I have ever seen (professionally) were all over naming
schemes. I'd hate to recommend what you should name your machines, but
I'll share some of my thought on what you should consider. (It is really
more like a random spewing of many of my thoughts on the subject). 

There are essentially two camps on this issue. On one side are the
people who 
want everything to look like prt02nycd4, which means something to them. 
On the other side are people who would like people readable names. There

are reasonable arguments to be made for both.

Encoding Names
==============
There are two main reasons for creating machine-readable,
human-unmemorable names. (1) To encode every piece of information
possible into it and (2) to enable rapid rollouts of machines. 

The main argument for encoding information into the hostname is to allow

the SA, upon simply seeing the hostname, to be able to tell you
everything
there is to know about the machine ... its purpose, location, type,
user, prod or dev, and OS flavor. While doing this may make SA's lives
easier,
every time some aspect of this information changes you must change the
hostname,
or you cannot depend on any of the names. Databases, on the other hand,
are really 
good at keeping this kind of information, and they do nor require you 
to rename the machine when you move it, change its user, or move it from
dev 
to prod. Create a database with easily accessible tools, and then a
lookup of 
'calvin' will tell you that it is an ultrasparc 1 with 256MB of memory, 
currently in use by 'joe', with a particular IP address in a specific
building.
Having automated update scripts makes sure the information does not go
out of date.

Allowing rapid rollouts is a much stronger argument. When you are
rolling out
50 machine a day, selecting interesting and memorable name becomes more
difficult,
though certainly not impossible, and usually a creative challenge!

Human Digestible Names
======================

There are also numerous benefits for naming systems in a human readable,
and 
likeable, form. 
- If users are looking for a calculation server, it is easier for them
to look
for nycalc1 than nypc013b. 
- When calling the helpdesk for a machine that is down, a user might
actually
be able to provide the name of their machine.
- It is also important not to overlook the psychology of your users.
What you 
really want is happy users. A way to make a user feel more comfortable
with 
their system is to make it take on more of a personality. Providing it
with 
a memorable name is one way to accomplish this. 

Incidentally, if they regularly support a user, SAs will also come to
quickly place
his machine, since these names are more memorable to SAs as well. One
scheme that
worked well is naming groups of machines with similar names, so that any

football team, for instance, represent one area. When an SA sees a
machine named
'jets' he knows that it in the 'football' group (or the 'planes' group).
This tends
to work in medium sized companies best.



Some specific advice: 
1) naming machines after people, as others have indicated, is REALLY
bad. I left a company 8 years ago, and I 	think a machine with my
name on it is still floating around. 
2) for very similar reasons, naming machines based on their IP address
is also bad. If you ever plan to move 	machines (and I assume that you
do - most of the places that I've worked at move over 100 machines each
weekend) you will also have to rename machines, and, depending on
applications and operating system type, this can be very
painful. Host files were invented so you would not need to remember your
IP address. While many people claim that renaming hosts is
easy, not renaming them is even easier (and I'd like to see them
rename 1000 windows 3.1 systems over a weekend move!)

The most important thing to consider when coming up with a naming scheme
what you are trying to accomplish (and make sure your users will agree
as well).
- Are you trying to make your SA's lives easier? Do they need to know by
simply looking at a host name everything about that machine.
- Do you care if your users remember their machine names? It is much
more likely that they will remember and enjoy a name like
'snowwhite' than 'dnys103fg'.
- Are you trying to name clients, servers, or both? You may want to name
a server after a function, so that people can address it
(especially if you do not have tools to automatically direct them to a
service). On the other 	hand, you may want to either allow for
personalization of clients, or, if you are rolling out many clients, you
may want names that can be automatically generated.

One thing that is a given is that, unless you are the only person at
your site,
there will be people violently, in some cases homicidally, opposed to
whatever naming scheme you come up with. Live with it. The important
thing is that you think about what you are trying to accomplish, make
sure that your reasons are acceptable, pick a naming scheme, and start
using it. And very importantly, document and publish both the scheme and
why you chose it. If you don't do this, someone will come along 6 months
later and try to do it all over again.

Hope this helps. Incidentally, the names of the two machines on my desk
(not
selected by me :-) are etsmns052 and nbtodc032. Anyone want to get into
a 
discussion of user names ;-)

Xev Gittler
xev.gittler@gs.com

[Note that my views do not reflect my employer, the people that I
work with, or anyone that I've ever met. They are solely based on years
of 
bashing my head against others on this issue].