brlancer's Journal: Nodenames

I've seen numerous disputes regarding hostnames. Different conventions, from the abstract (within a pattern) to entirely location based to service based to some garbage that some project manager thought up.

This is a really dumb argument.

There are different points of view here and all of them contain some portion of a good final solution; what astounds me is that groups almost always miss that final solution and shoot themselves in the foot.

Every computer I have ever owned or maintained has used a hostname convention: my originals were named after areas of New York state; I moved to national capitals at home and Muppets at work; after a job change, I lost all my Muppets so I moved to Robotech characters. Even if these seem nonsensical, each host was unique and identifiable and others were easily able to identify my hosts. Those two mundane issues: service identity and host identity, are crucial to any hostname convention.

I recognize now that many people do not properly understand this purpose. I also recognize that I may be forced to justify my position on this repeatedly. As such, I need a treatise--I need a document that lays out once and for all the pros and cons of the dilemma and creates a singular conclusion I can defend.

That or I'll waste a lot of time and get shouted down by a manager who just wants to mark his terroritory like a dog on a fire hydrant.