marmarama , 1 year ago

At least for me, there is a big difference between naming things at home and naming things for work.

Work “pet” machines get systematic names based on function, location, ownership and/or serial/asset numbers. There aren’t very many of them these days. If they are “cattle” then they get random names, and their build is ephemeral. If they go wrong or need an upgrade, they get rebuilt and their replacement build gets a new random name. Whether they are pets or cattle, the hostnames are secondary to tags and other metadata, and in most cases the tags are used to identify the machines in the first instance, because tags are far more flexible and descriptive than a hostname.

At home, where the number of machines is limited, I know all of them like the back of my hand, and it’s mostly just me touching them, whimsical names are where it’s at.