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Out of curiosity, I've seen it in many places that intranet servers were named after Greek/Roman gods. Is it any custom or tradition or simply a coincidence?

Aenye_Cerbin
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  • I've noticed the 7 dwarves and Lord of the Rings. Generally, people pick a theme and stick with it. Your survey may not be representative: how many intranet servers' names do you know? An early book on servers used planet names (which are also Roman god names) as an example, and some people may have used that. – Barry Carter Aug 19 '22 at 14:46
  • @BarryCarter My survey is certainly incomplete, that's why I'm asking. I've noticed such naming pattern in my university and at work and was simply curious if it's any custom or tradition, because a coincidence of separate institutions with different admins naming their servers the same way seemed quite improbable. – Aenye_Cerbin Aug 20 '22 at 15:31

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In my experience, this is a fad that faded out years ago. Most sysadmins today have better things to do than to come up with clever names for their servers. Most servers I see today are named according to their function, or based on some type of asset tracking naming convention.

"Is Dionysus the print server or the web server?" - Don't do that.

joeqwerty
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  • You must be a really fun person to work with. – Barry Carter Aug 19 '22 at 15:23
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    Try keeping track of which functions and services a server provides based on it's Greek or Roman God name... – joeqwerty Aug 19 '22 at 15:25
  • "We've got 300 servers named after Greek Gods. Which one is the print server?" – joeqwerty Aug 19 '22 at 15:26
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    "Poseidon used to be the file server, but we migrated it to Hera" - My God, I'd shoot myself. – joeqwerty Aug 19 '22 at 15:30
  • You can use aliases for that. That's particularly useful if you want to move functionality from one physical server to another. – Barry Carter Aug 19 '22 at 15:31
  • `My God, I'd shoot myself` -- not sure your coworkers would object :) – Barry Carter Aug 19 '22 at 15:31
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    **You can use aliases for that.** Nobody wants to do that. Reasonable and sensible people stopped doing this long ago. Of course, these are only my opinions. – joeqwerty Aug 19 '22 at 15:31
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/138636/discussion-between-barry-carter-and-joeqwerty). – Barry Carter Aug 19 '22 at 15:31
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    Generally speaking I wouldn't hire a sysadmin who names servers or other IT kit with these silly colloquial names as it shows they're not used to working in very large infrastructures where their names would simply run out and also these names tell others nothing of their purpose/location etc. It's a sign of one person playing too an important role in an infrastructure, I've certainly never seen this kind of environment and not found a trail of other bad practices such as zero documentation. – Chopper3 Aug 19 '22 at 15:32
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    @BarryCarter my coworkers would shoot me if I tried to use one of these ridiculous names. ;) – joeqwerty Aug 19 '22 at 15:35
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    All in good fun... no offense intended with any of my comments. – joeqwerty Aug 19 '22 at 15:35
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    Chaos, the god of the void, perfect name for a printserver, or Tartarus, the god of the darkest and deepest part of the Underworld, which fit a printserver too, can't decide which one I would use :P – yagmoth555 Aug 19 '22 at 19:41
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    @Chopper3: I agree, but I've seen so much ignoring standards, making up standards, dupe names, default WINX- prefixes, or naming hosts POOL-BAR or MGR-LAPTOP, if I saw a host named ZEUS wouldn't even flinch. Otherwise its really infuriating. In an 100k host environment with semi-feral sysadmins a few of them are going to be crap. – Greg Askew Aug 19 '22 at 20:56