Educause Security Discussion mailing list archives
Re: Server naming conventions
From: Steven Tardy <sjt5 () ITS MSSTATE EDU>
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 10:15:11 -0600
a wise man long ago decided to decouple the server purpose from the server name. physical servers get retasked confusing inventory and tracking and management. physical servers use tree names... fig / elm / oak / catalpa / pine / cedar / ... then DNS CNAMEs pointing the purpose to the host. smtps -=> catalpa our sister group used to use rocks/mineral. oak is easier to spell than tsavorite. (: other groups on campus use cartoon characters and movie characters. today with virtual servers, virtual servers are named based on purpose. ... a VM wouldn't be retasked. you'd simply create a new VM. distinct names makes things easier to remember: catalpa is part of smtps as opposed to: srv## is part of smtps can't remember what this server does? we have a file on each server with it's purpose. login and cat a file. Daniel Woodruff wrote:
What kinds of naming conventions do everyone follow when building new servers? Currently, our Windows hosts are named following the pattern 'its-w2ks#' or similar, where the # is the next in the sequence, and the names are published in DNS. What are the potential drawbacks or using a scheme like this? Do you think it is any better or worse from a security perspective than using something like 'its-oracle-1' which has the service right in the name? We're concerned about disclosing the purpose of the machine via its name, and are trying to get an idea of what other schools do for their machines. Thanks in advance.
-- Steven Tardy Systems Programmer Information Technology Infrastructure Information Technology Services Mississippi State University sjt5 () its msstate edu
Current thread:
- Re: Server naming conventions, (continued)
- Re: Server naming conventions Stanclift, Michael (Feb 10)
- Re: Server naming conventions Sherry Horeanopoulos (Feb 10)
- Re: Server naming conventions Valdis Kletnieks (Feb 10)
- Re: Server naming conventions Laurie Zirkle (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Childs, Aaron (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Woodruff, Daniel (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Sherry Horeanopoulos (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Gene Spafford (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Stucky, David (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Cal Frye (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Steven Tardy (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Stanclift, Michael (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Michael J. Wheeler (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Timothy Fairlie (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Derek Diget (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Michael J. Wheeler (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Julian Y. Koh (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Sandra Barclay (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Andreas Paulisch (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Dan Oachs (Feb 11)
- Re: Server naming conventions Barbara Ann Torney (Feb 11)
(Thread continues...)