Institutional Knowledge

Naming schemes are always fun to brainstorm. Network Operations used to use the names of characters from Futurama, Pat and Ryan use characters from West Wing for their servers and Muppet characters for their desktop stations. For awhile I used Homestarrunner characters, but now on my second Tour of Duty, I decided to try and implement a new scheme that would provide a wealth of options and yet also help establish some sort of heirarchy.
Since I needed a machine name and for firewall purposes I decided to go with an idea that appeared to gather interest from others (namely Ryan and Pat) in our little sector of the library: airport codes.

Airports around the world are assigned unique 3-4 letter codes. By adopting this scheme we would ensure a huge source of ideas for new machine names. Not to mention 3-4 character names are easier to remember and spell compared with character names from TV. Plus if wisely implimented we could also describe the importance of the machine with the codes. For example a server that hosts a CMS used campus-wide would be worthy of an LHR or JFK since those are major airports which handle lots of traffic.

Today, I got my machine name for my PC workstation: AMS. AMS is the code for Amsterdam, Schipol Airport. I chose to start with Amsterdam because it was one of the cool cities I visited last summer. Now I just need to pick another code for my iBook…