Ask HN: How do you name your servers?

#1

Post by mashmac2 » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 7:00 PM UTC

I've heard (and worked at places with) lots of interesting stories about hostnames within an organization, but I'd love to see if there's some consensus.

So, HN, how do you name your servers?

To start things off, I've seen servers named for Transformers, One Piece characters, people in the Bible, and philosophers.

What are your best server name suggestions?

Re: Ask HN: How do you name your servers?

#2

Post by pg » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 7:10 PM UTC

At Viaweb we used to name them after Tintin characters.

Re: Ask HN: How do you name your servers?

#3

Post by Sharma » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 7:10 PM UTC

Gandalf,Isaac,Einstein

Re: Ask HN: How do you name your servers?

#4

Post by dcolgan » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 7:11 PM UTC

Mine is the setup with One Piece characters as OP mentioned. This also includes my dev computers. Our setup is thus:

Prod for my LLC is Luffy since he is the captain. My desktop is Zoro since the desktop is the most powerful computer I have. My laptop is Usopp since I work with it the most and I sort of identify with that character. Another client server is Franky because that client was weird. A client server I setup once is Robin since that name wasn't taken.

Each character is sort of vaguely descriptive of the machine they name.

Another scheme I worked with once was physics words for movement. The dev machine was impetus, staging was acceleration, and prod was velocity.

I once got burned with putting funny filler text on a live production site. Naming servers creatively is a safer way of having fun that is also more subtle.

Re: Ask HN: How do you name your servers?

#5

Post by johnmurch » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 7:16 PM UTC

At a past job we used named of ski resorts (killington, okemo, snowbird,...). Although I always though it would be interesting to choose a music genre and go big - like 90s rap stars (2pac, jayz, Wu-Tang Clan, ..)

Just my My 2 cents -

Pick something that has a meaning to the person running it and some what relates to the organization.

Re: Ask HN: How do you name your servers?

#6

Post by gcb0 » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 7:18 PM UTC

role-colo-index, e.g. wwwsf27.domain.com

i'm boring as hell.

Re: Ask HN: How do you name your servers?

#7

Post by cl8ton » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 7:24 PM UTC

We use the cast from Seinfeld (Kramer, Babu, SoupNazi etc...)

Re: Ask HN: How do you name your servers?

#8

Post by cedsav » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 7:31 PM UTC

pg wrote: post #2

At Viaweb we used to name them after Tintin characters.

Awesome. I hope you didn't have a Thomson for dev and a Thompson for production :-)

Re: Ask HN: How do you name your servers?

#9

Post by memset » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 7:35 PM UTC

A long time ago, I was fond of a young woman whose family was originally from Denmark. As the ultimate testament to my love, I named my computer 'danish'. Breakfast-themed computer names followed the in-joke: eggs, toast, waffle.

Years later, having moved on, I switched to jazz musicians (I play the saxophone.) coltrane, gillespie, parker.

Re: Ask HN: How do you name your servers?

#10

Post by 27182818284 » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 7:35 PM UTC

When I can, I enjoy naming them things like "Megahertz" or "my RAM" so that when they crash, people sound silly. "My RAM is down" or "Megahertz isn't working"