Network Naming Conventions

[Ph4lanx]

So I was thinking of redoing my home network in terms of naming convention. I was wondering what you guys have come up with in terms of naming for home or even work networks.

I didn't want to do the usual Star Wars or anything like that, but it would be nice to "tidy up" my networking naming conventions

 

[dave-lew99]

We used to use rocks as a theme (as in geology)

Now it's a 2 or 3 letter use code (eg www, fs, app, gw, sw), an index num and location.

Eg. www-01-lon would be web server 1, london.

 

[Meridian]

Home is figures from Greek mythology: Cerberus, Charon, Persephone and Medusa.

Work where I control them are the Nine Divines: Arkay, Akatosh, etc. Ones I don't control have included birds, composers, fictional detectives, cartoon characters etc.



M

 

[jaybee]

My home setup is pretty simple so the hostnames are just randomly made. In fact, I can't see how you would need anything massively logic since it's mainly a one time setup then it all works and stuff knows each other etc.

Work is a different matter. Our naming convention is generally:

LOCATION-DETAIL-FUNCTION.domain.com

LON-AD-FPS01

London - Active Directory Server - File and Print 01

 

[bigredshark]

Slightly offtopic but the two things I really hate are people who name business systems using conventions like that (it's annoying, it's unhelpful and it's not professional). Years later something will break and people will wonder round going "what does that server called 'pluto' do again?". Either name it usefully or give a numeric code name which can be looked up in a database to provide that useful information.

Secondly I also really don't like people who hyphenate host names, it's distinctly non standard on the internet and slows things down -

"which box is that running on"
"dns intel 01"
"dnsintel01 isn't in DNS, oh hang on, you mean randomly hyphenated dns-intel-01 or dns-intel01?"

When you're trying to troubleshoot an urgent issue, getting people to verify how many hyphens and where they are in a hostname is the most annoying thing, and it serves no purpose accept to make the names look a little nicer.

I also don't like coding locations into hostnames, that's a function for the hierarchical component of dns (that is server01.lon5.domain.tld).

Anyway that's my rants over

 

[paradigm]

When you're trying to troubleshoot an urgent issue, getting people to verify how many hyphens and where they are in a hostname is the most annoying thing, and it serves no purpose accept to make the names look a little nicer.

I understand your rant, but for internal DNS I don't see how hyphenating is a problem, infact given that the hyphens themselves will be part of your naming standards, you know how many hyphens there will be, and where they will be, so the purpose of them is to break up the name into understandable and meaningful chunks, for the EXACT purpose of troubleshooting, especially if such troubleshooting/problem reporting is coming from non-technical sources.

A-XXX-YYY##

Where A = C, L, S, N or P (Computer, Laptop, Server, Network Device, Printer), XXX = Company Abbreviation (such as Envirofone = ENV), YYY = Function (e.g. ISA Server = ISA), and ## = Incremental number of server in that function.

 

[bigredshark]

I understand your rant, but for internal DNS I don't see how hyphenating is a problem, infact given that the hyphens themselves will be part of your naming standards, you know how many hyphens there will be, and where they will be, so the purpose of them is to break up the name into understandable and meaningful chunks, for the EXACT purpose of troubleshooting, especially if such troubleshooting/problem reporting is coming from non-technical sources.

A-XXX-YYY##

Where A = C, L, S, N or P (Computer, Laptop, Server, Network Device, Printer), XXX = Company Abbreviation (such as Envirofone = ENV), YYY = Function (e.g. ISA Server = ISA), and ## = Incremental number of server in that function.

Because with 15,000 servers deployed there's always a number where some idiot has gone off message when they named it and it's got an extra hyphen, or a missing hyphen or something odd. None at all is easier to deal with in my experience (and I can then grep the zonefiles for stray hyphens and hunt people down easier than writing a mad regex to verify the correct number and pattern of hyphens).

We stick to a rigidly defined first three letters (which tell us device type, OS and status) then whatever you fancy as a short name and a two digit numeric ID (though some people have failed at counting when it comes to the numeric ID recently). That tells me how to log on, if it's important and roughly what it does straight off.

Network kit is a bit different as it doesn't get a description or status field, just a device function and numeric ID.

 

[2blue4u]

Cats! Always. Start with four-letter cats like Lion, Lynx and Puma before moving on to bigger words if not cats.

Started doing this with DEC VAX 750 + 730

I now have a leopard on a leopard

 

[Kona*]

A load of our customers use hyphens in their device names; 95% of them do it correctly and mark everything down in an excel spreadsheet/database so it's easy to follow the naming convention and look up what name should be used next, the other 5% do it the wrong way and the hyphens are all over the place and no documentation which makes it a nightmare to guess a server name - I don't see a problem with it if it's done properly. For our offices and customers where we set up the network we use the following naming convention:

Servers: XXXYYYZZ (XXX = abbrivation of customers name, YYY = role of server eg. ISA, ZZ = 01 and so on)

Desktops/Laptops: XXXYYZZ (XXX = as above, YY = NB for notebooks, DT for desktops, ZZ = as above)

Routers/Switches/Firewalls: XXXYYZZ (same as above but RT for router, SW for switch and FW for firewall)

And then document everything