Naming Those Servers

When it comes time to name a server, there are a few places to go for ideas – and a few things to remember.

One of my favorites is to use Google Sets. If you give Google several entries, Google will come back with more that match your list. This can be handy when you are trying to come up with a new name in a list.

An unknown champion in this area would be the site NamingSchemes.com. Once you’ve found this site, you’ll want to bookmark it – there’s nothing like it out there. If some scheme is missing – you can add it, since it is an open wiki.

Lastly, there is a question over at ServerFault which has some fabulous naming schemes that people have used (my all time favorite has to be the one that used names from the RFB list!). Another fantastic list from that question involves something like the players name’s from the famous Abbot and Costello skit Who’s on First.

There is also an IEEE RFC on Naming Your Computer (RFC-1178) which has good tips.

In my background, I’ve used (or seen used – or heard of) schemes based on the Horses of the Apocolypse (“war”, “famine”, etc.), colors, headache relief (“aspirin”, “acetominophen”, etc.), “test” and synonyms (“test”, “quiz”, “exam” – for testing servers!), cities, and fruits. The cities environment was fun – the hardware had two partitions, so naming the partitions was done with cities that were near to each other. The headache relief was fun until the pharmaceutical company found some of the names were of competing drugs…

Think about your names – and have some fun, too!