spectre_240sx writes "We've discussed servernaming a fair amount in the past, but I haven't seen much about workstations. Where I currently work, we embed a lot of information in our workstation names: site, warranty end date, machine type, etc. I'm of the opinion that this is too much information to overload in the machine name when it can more suitably be stored in the computer description. I'd love to hear how others are naming their workstations and some pros and cons for different naming schemes. Should computers be logically tied to the person that they're currently assigned to, or does that just cause unnecessary work when a machine changes hands? Do the management tools in use make a difference in how workstations are named?"
Honestly, can you even think of a stupider question? How is this even an issue? Just name each machine with an ID and put the information in a spreadsheet somewhere. It's not a complicated problem.
Every engineering cluster had a theme. That meant that you knew what lab the machine was in but it still kept the names interesting. It also made it easy to remember that the dolts who killed remote jobs always used the NBA team machines because their prof told them to use that lab and how to kill processes.
The best theme? Rain, Snow, Hail, Leaf, Meteor, Skylab, etc. "Things that fall from the sky."
Simply name it after the the DATA DROP ID. You can locate the machine and when you change PC's, just change THAT machine name to correspond with the drop location.
Yeah, put it in a 'spreadsheet'. Most 'spreadsheets' are merely searchable lists... go figure, I guess people forget what a spreadsheet IS.
Problem with that is that you will continually either have out of date PC names that are named according to where they AREN'T - or you need to continually rename PCs, thus completely ass-raping any configuration database you have (issue tracking, asset tracking, software licensing, virus scanner history, etc).
Renaming PCs = BAD. You get away with it up to a certain size, but once you start implementing apps like a job tracking system, software licensing tracking, etc it just bites you in the arse... HARD.
We simply use UserName_SocialSecurityNumber_Room#_DayOfWeek
For example: JaneDoe_123456789_314A_Thursday
Since the day of the week tends to change, we have simple startup scripts which fix the workstation name each morning, assuming they shut down the previous evening.
That's a bit like how we name our workstations, only we use a concatenation of person's full name, SSN, date of birth, mother's maiden name, person's present address and phone number, medical history, plus a single random digit for security reasons.
Why even do that? Just give it an incremental ID and make it the primary key a database of whatever it is you want to know about the machine -- eg: location, serial number, IP address (if you use static addressing), whatever else. You shouldn't ever change the unique ID you give a machine. That's bad. IMHO its always better to avoid putting metadata in a unique identifier altogether. It does involve an extra step for the netadmin to get information about the machine, but the bonus is he can find out whatever he wants. Work smarter, not harder:-)
It might not seem complicated, but there are a number of traps for new players. Most of these traps involve trying to store location/user/OS information in the hostname - which seems like a good idea at the time, but just gives you false information down the track when people quit, machines move, or the OS gets upgraded.
If you rename the PCs you're forever trying to keep up - or dealing with false information, which is worse than no information...
Agreed. Just come up with a naming scheme and stick with it. Otherwise, you're just going to waste time trying to keep the names matching the machines' current status.
At the university I work, the servers are named after famous figures in the fields of psychology and brain research. At home, they're named after things from Star Control II (Ultron = the desktop that always breaks; Chmmr = the powerful computation server; Spathi = the laptop (which can flee the network); Greenish = the printer; Quasispace = the wifi network; etc).
I like to run a toke'n network. You take the toke, and when you're done, pass it along to the next node. I prefer this strategy for its high throughput. Not only that, but it's ahead of it's time. My network has been running a cloud for a couple decades already, and it was green before it was the in thing. The only problem is I can't remember what I named my workstations, so I'm afraid I can't help answer the question.
My first workstation was named tangent (after myself!) My second workstation was named sine, followed by cosine, secant, cosecant and cotangent. I got stuck for a while before I decided to go with arctangent, arcsine, etc but that didn't last So out came hyperbolictangent... and I promptly gave up and now I name them after hot young female movie stars.
Morale of the story: Make sure your naming convention has room for expansion.
I started off naming my (personal) workstations after cats that we'd had that had passed away. Eventually my hobby outpaced the number of cats, so I had to start rubbin' em out manually.
I'm not a fan of crazy overloading(the name has to be unique in any case and I'd rather do a lookup if I really need the warranty details, rather than stare a nasty truncated version of them in the face every day); but what works best really depends on how computers are used in your organization.
For instance, if you have laptops, individually assigned to employees, and relatively low turnover, a name that tells you about the machine's primary user is really handy. It allows you to instantly associate the voice on the other end of the phone, or the name on the trouble ticket, with the machine in question.
If you have desktops, location based naming might be more useful, particularly if users move around, are replaced frequently, or share hardware per shift or something.
It's hard to give general rules for naming because, in essence, a name should capture(as succinctly as possible) the salient characteristics that make something unique. Exactly what those characteristics are depends heavily on how your organization is set up.
There is very little you can store in a workstation name that will be static and useful once you go beyond about 10 machines (maybe even less than that).
People move, machines get re-allocated, rebuilt, etc.
I use the service tag. Why? Several reasons:
its already printed on the machine
you can get it out of the bios when imaging the PC
its one less thing to ask the user for if you need to do a warranty claim
it will never change
if will be unique, presuming you are a single supplier organisation
Stuff like "bob-pc" or "accounts1" does not scale and either becomes inconsistent, or you need to keep renaming PCs which presents other issues (fucks up any configuration databases you have, etc).
So, service tag - boring as fuck, but does the job.
That's basically what we're doing - except we're dividing them by program (we're a government agency) which makes it a little easier for us to delegate AD administration to each group of local IT folks - we have 5 programs so ISP (Information Serices Program) is ISP-servicetag....
We're putting each program (of computers) in its own OU and granting AD rights to a group to manage the PC's in each OU (so they can reset, delete or modify the computer objects). We have 5000 desktops across the country and no
...but I'm a big fan of giving machines actual names, after TV shows, bands, movies, fiction, etc. I prefer to log into "Trixie.mycompany.com" instead of "LAUX001"; the former, in addition to being easier to remember, just gives the machine a trifle bit of "personality". Yes, I realize that the latter may convey more information (mail servers especially seem to do this: "CHIMAIL01", "NYCEXCH05", etc.), but it feels cold and impersonal; if you treat your machines as just machines, as just any old random tool you'd grab and work with, then they become just a series of interchangeable parts. Giving a machine a name invokes something, typically whimsical, that just adds a touch of humanity back into the system. Yes it's still a machine, yes it's going to spit out a thousand nonsensical errors when you forget a semicolon somewhere in your C++ file, and yes it will eventually be replaced, but for that period of time when you're working with it, you're just that little bit more connected to something more... personal.
Maybe this is just old school thinking; it seems like this was much more common back when everyone had an account on the campus Unix boxen, complete with subtle importance ("Oh, you have an account on Kramden? That's a much faster Vax than Norton...what project are you working on that you scored that??").
I suspect that it was much more common back when computers were much less common. At home, I certainly indulge in evocative naming(mostly Cthulhu mythos, by preference); but at work there are over 1,000 machines. Until somebody lists the names of all Shub-Niggurath's offspring, I'm out of luck.(Well, that and the fact that users might not like dealing with unpronounceable machine names that reek of ancient and terrifying evil...)
Keep it simple. I work at a college, and what we do for desktops is, we name them after location, room, number of workstation. So if the workstation is at our aviation campus in room Y109 and it's the 3rd workstation, it would be AVY10903 (AV-Aviation, Y109-Room, 03-3rd workstation) Laptops, we tie to users, we give it the users login name as the laptops name. We find this easy so when we have staff/faculty turn over, we are not running to workstations to rename them, and if its a laptop user that is being replaced, the laptop is returned to IT and we get it ready for the next user.
This may or may not work for you, but it works for me.
Should computers be logically tied to the person that they're currently assigned to, or does that just cause unnecessary work when a machine changes hands?
The machine should be reimaged when it changes hands, so resetting the name will add about 5 seconds to the setup process. Not a big deal.
Except when you rename the PC you've destroyed any connection between the physical asset and any configuration database you have, such as a support history, purchasing, virus scanner database history, etc. Also, youv'e left an AD computer account that is no longer active in your directory that will need to be cleaned up (is the inactive computer account for that PC in storage, or has it been rebuilt??), and made it harder to keep track of volume licenses, etc.
Whatever naming scheme you choose, ensure that you can leave the names alone once they're assigned. Renaming PCs is bad and creates additional workload for no good reason.
Asset tags systems work well for this. It's what we use. Easy for RA requests too..just ask the user to read their asset tag number (if you don't have it memorized because it's the 5,689th time this dumbfuck has called you asking how to move a file from one folder to another.) and you can punch it in and connect.
Exactly. We have an 'asset tag' - a number written on the case with a sharpie. (Works perfectly fine for us!) The computer's name is just "PC" followed by the (zero padded to three digits) computer number. Thus, I'm on PC079.
(With us, when a person changes department or office, their computer follows them. Thus there's no sane reason for us to encode the office or department name into the computer's name.)
Use asset tags. They are unique (at least should be) all other data are stored in database else where, sub-records keeping rest of the information like software loaded, key#,...
*IF* BIG IF,you have more than 1 company under the same roof, add a simple company id, but really not needed, that is really a column in database.
Watch out for asset tags greater than 8 or 10 characters, depending. Can be problem with secondary machines and naming issues, like workstation ids IBM equipment (10 char unique / 8 char
In the tightest companies I have worked for, they name workstations and servers with meaningless random generated alphanumeric sequences.
I guess they consider it more secure, making it harder to figure out the network topology. Also, since the names are meaningless, there is never a need to rename the machine really, unless they would want to confuse even more want to be hackers.
My old university/job used a three letter department code, and then the last six digits of the asset tag. You'd get systems like ITS-26301 and MTH-31415.
This is pretty solid, especially because:
Machines rarely if ever change departments. Even the laptops. Entire departments can change buildings without issue; sociology moved across campus, and we were like, "Wait, when did you guys get the fuck over here?"
The first four digits of any asset tag (in the foreseeable future) are fixed, so just prefix it with 7802 and look it up in the online database (or Mac OS X dashboard widget made by yours truly, for the two other people in IT who have and use Macs) for more information than one cares to know.
A name needs to be recognizable by humans. Because inevitably someone is going to want to share some files and it's a whole lot easier if you can type in a normal name instead of mistaking RS34598 with RS34589. Granted, the user's name isn't good, because machines change hands all the time (without telling the busy bodies at IT about it). Cube numbers don't work, since a lot of machines are lab machines, or may turn into lab machines.
There really isn't a good way. Would be nice to have two names, a permanent one, assigned early on, probably related to an asset ID, and a nickname based on the user or purpose of the machine. The nickname can be changed anytime the user or department wants to do so. Except that this may be a pain to do on some operating systems.
Place I worked at previously had an even much simpler method: the hostname is the cubicle number followed by the image build number.
It made a lot of physical services such as repairs and upgrades much faster and really, there is just too much information about a user and machine to even consider using the hostname to store it all.
Worst ask slashdot ever (Score:3, Insightful)
And that's saying something.
Honestly, can you even think of a stupider question? How is this even an issue? Just name each machine with an ID and put the information in a spreadsheet somewhere. It's not a complicated problem.
Re:Worst ask slashdot ever (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed. spectre_240sx, your question was bad and you should FEEL bad.
Parent
Our old sys admin (Score:3, Funny)
University of Michigan model (Score:5, Funny)
Every engineering cluster had a theme. That meant that you knew what lab the machine was in but it still kept the names interesting. It also made it easy to remember that the dolts who killed remote jobs always used the NBA team machines because their prof told them to use that lab and how to kill processes.
The best theme? Rain, Snow, Hail, Leaf, Meteor, Skylab, etc. "Things that fall from the sky."
Parent
Re:Our old sys admin (Score:5, Funny)
I name computers after girls I've fucked.
Right hand and left hand?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Doesn't it get confusing with all those machines named after your mom?
Re:Our old sys admin (Score:5, Funny)
I name computers after girls I've fucked.
Well yes you can techincally name them al localhost. In fact they all have that name by default.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Simply name it after the the DATA DROP ID. You can locate the machine
and when you change PC's, just change THAT machine name to correspond
with the drop location.
Yeah, put it in a 'spreadsheet'. Most 'spreadsheets' are merely
searchable lists... go figure, I guess people forget what a
spreadsheet IS.
Re:Worst ask slashdot ever (Score:5, Insightful)
Renaming PCs = BAD. You get away with it up to a certain size, but once you start implementing apps like a job tracking system, software licensing tracking, etc it just bites you in the arse... HARD.
Parent
Re:Worst ask slashdot ever (Score:5, Funny)
Name them after porn stars. That way when you say "Sylvia went down on me yesterday", people will think you actually have a life.
Parent
Re:Worst ask slashdot ever (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Worst ask slashdot ever (Score:5, Funny)
That's a bit like how we name our workstations, only we use a concatenation of person's full name, SSN, date of birth, mother's maiden name, person's present address and phone number, medical history, plus a single random digit for security reasons.
Parent
Re:Worst ask slashdot ever (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, what? Seriously?!?
*brain melts down*
Yes, seriously. Everything you read on the Internet is true.
Parent
Re:Worst ask slashdot ever (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Name all the boring low powered beige boxes.... (Score:5, Funny)
You can use my name for the zooty new multi-core with the blue leds.
Parent
Re:Worst ask slashdot ever (Score:5, Insightful)
If you rename the PCs you're forever trying to keep up - or dealing with false information, which is worse than no information...
Parent
Re:Worst ask slashdot ever (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. Just come up with a naming scheme and stick with it. Otherwise, you're just going to waste time trying to keep the names matching the machines' current status.
At the university I work, the servers are named after famous figures in the fields of psychology and brain research. At home, they're named after things from Star Control II (Ultron = the desktop that always breaks; Chmmr = the powerful computation server; Spathi = the laptop (which can flee the network); Greenish = the printer; Quasispace = the wifi network; etc).
Parent
Re:Worst ask slashdot ever (Score:5, Funny)
Just name each machine with an ID and put the information in a spreadsheet somewhere. It's not a complicated problem.
Too much work. I just call all my machines "Bob".
Parent
Star Trek (Score:5, Funny)
Name them after Star Trek ships, races, planets and character names. You are obviously not a true CIS geek.
just please not CSI geeks. no rly. (Score:3, Funny)
imagine the horror of walking into a lab where all the workstations are named OMG-David-Caruso-01, ...
OMG-David-Caruso-02,
*shudders*
Re:Star Trek (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Star Trek (Score:5, Funny)
I like to run a toke'n network. You take the toke, and when you're done, pass it along to the next node. I prefer this strategy for its high throughput. Not only that, but it's ahead of it's time. My network has been running a cloud for a couple decades already, and it was green before it was the in thing. The only problem is I can't remember what I named my workstations, so I'm afraid I can't help answer the question.
Parent
A computer name is not a database (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A computer name is not a database (Score:5, Funny)
WasteOfMoney
SureToBeHacked
WorthlessAsset
ClearlyUnderpowered
SpiderSolitair
For "special" machines, you can name them based on your prediction on what part will fail first:
BadPowerSupply
WorstMotherboardEver
NoisyFan
Parent
Easy... (Score:3, Funny)
i.e. gla-hub-04a-001
or here's a off the wall idea...
Number them as: City(or location)+machines static IP address within the internal network.
i.e. Glasgow-10-10-11-124
simples....
Re:Easy... (Score:5, Insightful)
I laughed out loud. Using the IP address as the hostname? Genius.
Parent
Re:Easy... (Score:5, Funny)
If only there was some lightweight, distributed DB that could be used to associate a hostname with an IP address...
Parent
I ran out of names for my workstation (Score:5, Funny)
My first workstation was named tangent (after myself!)
My second workstation was named sine, followed by cosine, secant, cosecant and cotangent.
I got stuck for a while before I decided to go with arctangent, arcsine, etc but that didn't last
So out came hyperbolictangent... and I promptly gave up and now I name them after hot young female movie stars.
Morale of the story: Make sure your naming convention has room for expansion.
Re:I ran out of names for my workstation (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:I never run out of names (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Depends, really... (Score:5, Interesting)
For instance, if you have laptops, individually assigned to employees, and relatively low turnover, a name that tells you about the machine's primary user is really handy. It allows you to instantly associate the voice on the other end of the phone, or the name on the trouble ticket, with the machine in question.
If you have desktops, location based naming might be more useful, particularly if users move around, are replaced frequently, or share hardware per shift or something.
It's hard to give general rules for naming because, in essence, a name should capture(as succinctly as possible) the salient characteristics that make something unique. Exactly what those characteristics are depends heavily on how your organization is set up.
service tag (Score:5, Interesting)
People move, machines get re-allocated, rebuilt, etc.
I use the service tag. Why? Several reasons:
Stuff like "bob-pc" or "accounts1" does not scale and either becomes inconsistent, or you need to keep renaming PCs which presents other issues (fucks up any configuration databases you have, etc).
So, service tag - boring as fuck, but does the job.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We're putting each program (of computers) in its own OU and granting AD rights to a group to manage the PC's in each OU (so they can reset, delete or modify the computer objects). We have 5000 desktops across the country and no
I think I'm in the minority here... (Score:5, Interesting)
...but I'm a big fan of giving machines actual names, after TV shows, bands, movies, fiction, etc. I prefer to log into "Trixie.mycompany.com" instead of "LAUX001"; the former, in addition to being easier to remember, just gives the machine a trifle bit of "personality". Yes, I realize that the latter may convey more information (mail servers especially seem to do this: "CHIMAIL01", "NYCEXCH05", etc.), but it feels cold and impersonal; if you treat your machines as just machines, as just any old random tool you'd grab and work with, then they become just a series of interchangeable parts. Giving a machine a name invokes something, typically whimsical, that just adds a touch of humanity back into the system. Yes it's still a machine, yes it's going to spit out a thousand nonsensical errors when you forget a semicolon somewhere in your C++ file, and yes it will eventually be replaced, but for that period of time when you're working with it, you're just that little bit more connected to something more ... personal.
Maybe this is just old school thinking; it seems like this was much more common back when everyone had an account on the campus Unix boxen, complete with subtle importance ("Oh, you have an account on Kramden? That's a much faster Vax than Norton...what project are you working on that you scored that??").
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I think I'm in the minority here... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
KISS (Score:4, Interesting)
Changing hands shouldn't be a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The machine should be reimaged when it changes hands, so resetting the name will add about 5 seconds to the setup process. Not a big deal.
Re:Changing hands shouldn't be a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever naming scheme you choose, ensure that you can leave the names alone once they're assigned. Renaming PCs is bad and creates additional workload for no good reason.
Parent
There's an RFC for that (Score:3, Informative)
Just for reference: RFC 1178
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1178.html [faqs.org]
While it is not a direct answer to your question, it does give a lot of good why and why not's on this subject. Just as handy now as in the 90s.
Re:Like an ID for a database record (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. We have an 'asset tag' - a number written on the case with a sharpie. (Works perfectly fine for us!) The computer's name is just "PC" followed by the (zero padded to three digits) computer number. Thus, I'm on PC079.
(With us, when a person changes department or office, their computer follows them. Thus there's no sane reason for us to encode the office or department name into the computer's name.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Use asset tags. They are unique (at least should be) all other data are stored in database else where, sub-records keeping rest of the information like software loaded, key#, ...
*IF* BIG IF,you have more than 1 company under the same roof, add a simple company id, but really not needed, that is really a column in database.
Watch out for asset tags greater than 8 or 10 characters, depending. Can be problem with secondary machines and naming issues, like workstation ids IBM equipment (10 char unique / 8 char
Re:Let Mr. Black hat do it for you (Score:5, Funny)
That's close to our system. We use adult toy names. It's pretty good, but you have to be careful not to use something obvious like "vibrator".
Arab, Bead, Tickler, Butterfly, MagicWand, Swing, Clamp, JackRabbit, etc... no one's caught on yet.
Parent
Re:don't name by person just makes it harder to do (Score:4, Insightful)
In the tightest companies I have worked for, they name workstations and servers with meaningless random generated alphanumeric sequences.
I guess they consider it more secure, making it harder to figure out the network topology. Also, since the names are meaningless, there is never a need to rename the machine really, unless they would want to confuse even more want to be hackers.
Parent
Re:don't name by person just makes it harder to do (Score:4, Informative)
My old university/job used a three letter department code, and then the last six digits of the asset tag. You'd get systems like ITS-26301 and MTH-31415.
This is pretty solid, especially because:
Your mileage may vary.
Parent
Re:don't name by person just makes it harder to do (Score:4, Interesting)
There really isn't a good way. Would be nice to have two names, a permanent one, assigned early on, probably related to an asset ID, and a nickname based on the user or purpose of the machine. The nickname can be changed anytime the user or department wants to do so. Except that this may be a pain to do on some operating systems.
Parent
Re:don't name by person just makes it harder to do (Score:5, Informative)
Place I worked at previously had an even much simpler method: the hostname is the cubicle number followed by the image build number.
It made a lot of physical services such as repairs and upgrades much faster and really, there is just too much information about a user and machine to even consider using the hostname to store it all.
Parent
Re:don't name by person just makes it harder to do (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a lot of work when someone changes a cubicle.
Parent
What's hard about "hostname"? (Score:4, Insightful)
because if you're going to rename a server, you might as well rebuild it
What, "hostname $new_name" is too hard to type? I mean, you don't hardcode the machine name in application config files and rc scripts, do you?
Do you?
Parent