Some people call them after family members. Some people call them after animals. And the Lord of the Rings series of books and Greek mythology seem to be an eternally popular sources of inspirations. What am I talking about here? Kids names? No, server names, of course!

David Stennett, a freelance contractor specializing in program and project management who’s old enough to know better, gets his ideas from the sky at night and cartoons:

I usually name my servers using either 1. Planets (the bigger the server, the greater the name … big servers named Jupiter1, Jupiter2, etc … smaller servers or desktops … Mercury, etc.) or 2. Transformers (servers named after larger transformers like Devastator, Omega Supreme, Unicron; desktops named after normal Autobots or Decepticons).

According to one of the chaps over at Diskeeper Corporation – who, to spare his blushes, I shall allow to remain anonymous - they once went down the Greek mythology route (Athena, Atlas, Janus, etc.), but have since adopted a much less interesting approach:

We have since standardized our servers with a naming convention of 3 letter location > Server Function > Number of Server.

*yawn* How to suck the fun out of life!

Continue reading What do you call yours?