Ten

Creative Server-Naming Conventions

Readers reflect back to the days when naming their servers involved imagination and the ability to possess a sense of humor.

• By Paul Desmond
• 10/01/2005

When we asked Redmond readers to report their most creative server naming conventions, many gave us names from jobs long past. Because IT has a higher profile these days, most companies have server naming conventions that make some sort of sense—in other words, they're no fun at all. Several respondents also pointed out that publicizing your server naming conventions could lead to security vulnerabilities. "Shame on you for asking! Now be gone while I get back to petting my firewall."

OK, we get the picture. So we're withholding crucial identifying information (gee, that was easy) from these gems submitted by kind souls who share our love of total nonsense, while hoping the day will come when we can collectively lighten up.

10. Holy Crappie
Over the years, one Kansas City-based reader has seen naming conventions based on actors, monsters and eventually, fish. "Bass, Grouper (Lotus Notes, of course), Pike and so on. We were a Dell shop, so when we were forced to install a Compaq server for Citrix access from other sites, that server was dubbed 'Crappie!'"

9. "You Cannot Be Serious!"
Stephen Platt started naming servers for great tennis players, such as Williams, Agassi, Connors and Graf. "After all, they're 'servers,'" he says. "We were going to use McEnroe, but we didn't want a server that blew up all the time."

8. Lunchtime Musings
A network engineer whose identity I have chosen to protect for his own good says, "We have named servers based on how we feel after eating in the company cafeteria: Queasy, Smelly, Squishy, Rotten and Whatisit. Of these, Queasy is still in production after four years. The rest have been thrown out with the other leftovers."

7. Inmates Runing the Asylum
"Before we were taken over by a company with absolutely no imagination, all of our servers and printers were given names related to Monty Python's Flying Circus," says one contributor who preferred to remain anonymous. "Our newest printer was named Asylum, referring to the work conditions prevalent at the time."

6. Lasting Impressions
"I started naming my office network based on my impressions of Microsoft at that time (and maybe still)," says Kerry Erb, who runs his own computer service business. Choice examples include:

• Domain controllers: Pompous and Audacious
• Servers: Grandiose, Braggard, Blowhard and Goliath
• Workstations: Pretentious, Gargantuan, Bloated and Ostentatious.

5. Chardonnay with that Gruyere?
Mike Piontkowski of Irvine, Calif., had a client that named all of its infrastructure servers after cheeses. "Not only was it tough to remember the function of each because the name had no correlation, but it was difficult to spell and say some of them, like Camembert, Gouda and Gruyere," he says. "It would have been nice if they named their printers after wines."

4. Elvis Lives
One anonymous contributor worked for a client that had a server named Elvis. "Whenever the server was pinged, it responded with 'Elvis is alive.'"

3. Admins Behaving Badly
Tim Hoekstra used to work in "a pretty loose shop," that had wide discretion in terms of server names. They abused it admirably, naming servers after beers, including Becks and Tecate. "But my favorite two servers were our WINS servers: Crash and Burn."

2. Hello, Newman
In addition to dead presidents, Matthew Woods, a network admin in Chicago, says his company's servers are named after Seinfeld characters: "Jerry, Elaine, Kramer, Costanza and Newman—the mail server, of course!"

1. Imagine the Possibilities
Douglas Peters, senior network technician with Examination Management Services Inc., in Waco, Texas, gets my vote for most creative name—even if he's never used it. "I've always wanted to name a server 'MyPants,' just to hear the users shout 'MyPants is down!'"