LEGOLAS?  JEDI?  JAKARTA? UHURU? What was your systems admin thinking when he named those servers?  A question I’m sure many of us have asked ourselves at work.  In this post, I’ll attempt to answer the question of “Why are all of the servers named after Snow White Dwarves?”

Aaaachoo!

There are two major schools of thought in naming networked computer devices.  There is the abbreviation and sequence based method used by many large organizations, and the theme based method.

Often in large organizations server and network device naming conventions are determined in a committee and include a list of abbreviations that make it easy for staff to determine a devices location and purpose.  It’s effective.  It’s also boring. In small organizations it sometimes falls to the imagination of the systems administrator.  Some systems administrators are more creative than others.  Some naming conventions can be entertaining, while others embrace the science fiction cannon.

Throughout my career I’ve worked for companies big and small and have seen all kinds.  I thought I’d share some of my favorites.

Back in the early days of Dell Computer, many servers were named after trees.  I recall ELM and CHERRY being important systems in my working life there.  At a business I worked for we used the planets for our server names; MARS, EARTH, VENUS, PLUTO.  Those were the heady pre Y2K days of building Active Server Pages in IIS 3.0.  One senior exec had staff affix Styrofoam models of the planets on the computer monitors for “wow-factor” in hosting tours with prospective clients.

I’ve seen cheeses used as server names.  “Can you log into CHEDDAR?” and “ I can’t access COLBY” were occasionally heard in the office.  Who moved my cheese, indeed.  I’ve also seen wine used.  But wines can have long names, and be difficult to spell.  There’s car names, cities visited, islands around Java, towns in Baja, and flavors of ice cream.

I’ve seen the entire universe of Lord of the Rings / Star Wars / Star Trek naming references.  I think at some point every company has had a server named DEATHSTAR.  Naming a server TRIBBLE is cute, but try telling your VP of marketing to run his demo off of the LEGOLAS or SAURON servers.  – It gets tricky.

There are also many comic book characters, cartoons, and more recent pop culture references sprouting up as we speak.  American Idol contestant names?  Celebutantes? Vampire movie characters? The Smoke Monster from Lost?  The new iteration is just around the corner folks.