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Choosing a Name for Your Computer

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Re: Choosing a Name for Your Computer

#2

Post by theandrewbailey »

I've been using LoadingReadyRun's Installation Anxiety sketch[0] as a guide to name computers around my house. I originally had a file server, so I named it toilet, then I had a web server named gram, and named my router dishwasher. I recently started a job where I get to run iventoy[1], so the computer it's running on is paul.

[0] https://wiki.loadingreadyrun.com/index.php/Installation_Anxi...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ajW2fDy41fY

[1] https://www.iventoy.com/

Re: Choosing a Name for Your Computer

#3

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

my first tech job was doing datacenter monkeywork and phone support for a small-town ISP. a lot of our older machines predated the "function-number" naming scheme (db01.foobar.net, web03.foobar.net etc) and instead were named after various Middle Earth locales. edge routers took regional names, firewalls usually took mountain names, web/file servers were named after big structures/cities etc. took me forever to learn (since i'd only read the books once at that point) but i've carried it with me for personal machine/local network naming ever since.

i like descriptive cattle names for machines i support professionally but home stuff gets to stay fun :)

Re: Choosing a Name for Your Computer

#4

Post by Tanoc »

The way I've been naming computers for about a decade now is formfactor, intent, and architecture. So you end up with SBC-MUSIC-ARM, TOWER-SERVER-INTEL, LAPTOP-TEMP-AMD, and so on and so forth. It's great so long as you don't have more than about fifteen computers. For a while there were three desktops in one room all dedicated to rendering, so they received names that when read in order were a nod towards a certain film: 1TOWER-RED, 2TOWER-ON, and 3TOWER-YOU.

Re: Choosing a Name for Your Computer

#5

Post by ElectricalUnion »

GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #3

my first tech job was doing datacenter monkeywork and phone support for a small-town ISP. a lot of our older machines predated the "function-number" naming scheme (db01.foobar.net, web03.foobar.net etc) and instead were named after various Middle Earth locales. edge routers took regional names, firewalls usually took mountain names, web/file servers were named after big structures/cities etc. took me forever to learn…

I somehow misread "cattle names" and was thinking about bovine names for servers. I guess such naming scheme could work well in a Rancher cluster context.

Re: Choosing a Name for Your Computer

#6

Post by wildpeaks »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #2

I've been using LoadingReadyRun's Installation Anxiety sketch[0] as a guide to name computers around my house. I originally had a file server, so I named it toilet , then I had a web server named gram , and named my router dishwasher . I recently started a job where I get to run iventoy[1], so the computer it's running on is paul . [0] https://wiki.loadingreadyrun.com/index.php/Installation_Anxi... https://m.youtube.…

A fellow LRR enjoyer <3

Re: Choosing a Name for Your Computer

#7

Post by tears-in-rain »

> Don't use antagonistic or otherwise embarrassing names.

         Words like "moron" or "twit" are good names if no one else is
         going to see them.  But if you ever give someone a demo on your
         machine, you may find that they are distracted by seeing a
         nasty word on your screen.  (Maybe their spouse called them
         that this morning.)  Why bother taking the chance that they
         will be turned off by something completely irrelevant to your
         demo.
This.. Now i have bunch of meme-bros instead of useful colleagues.

Re: Choosing a Name for Your Computer

#8

Post by dpoloncsak »

Every machine in my home stack is named after a Pokemon. Theres hundreds of options, each pretty unique, and fun. You also get some sense of scale, in that stronger machines can correlate to stronger pokes.

Beefy desktop with a strong GPU? Name it after a legendary.

RPI? One of the thousand little electric guys. Rotom, voltorb, .....

That daily driver laptop that never leaves your side? I usually pick a starter evo or eeveeloution

Cloud server? Pick a flying type.

It like having a theme to my whole infrastructure. Even my DuckDDNS is named after porygon, the cyber duck.

Re: Choosing a Name for Your Computer

#9

Post by mrpotato »

Tanoc wrote: post #4

The way I've been naming computers for about a decade now is formfactor, intent, and architecture. So you end up with SBC-MUSIC-ARM, TOWER-SERVER-INTEL, LAPTOP-TEMP-AMD, and so on and so forth. It's great so long as you don't have more than about fifteen computers. For a while there were three desktops in one room all dedicated to rendering, so they received names that when read in order were a nod towards a certain…

> Don't choose a name after a project unique to that machine.

The second paragraph of page 1 describes exactly what happened with your setup :D

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