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Starcraft Network

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107 pointsslifty49 comments

This is pretty clever. Reminds me of an article a few years ago about printer names -- YouTube named theirs after Wu-Tang members; Google, after Transformers:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/07/the-wu-ta...

Regrettably, I must report that at Blizzard, printers have boring but functional names. And even though the campus is laid out with three buildings positioned similarly to the current WoW map, they're merely Buildings 1, 2, and 3. At least the meeting rooms all have lore names, however.

That's actually depressingly boring for one of the worlds most recognizable games companies.

It makes me feel like throwing out my lucky charms and eat cheerios for breakfast. (FYI I'm in my 20's, but shitty North America doesn't have good breakfast cereals like the UK)

Eh, if it makes you feel any better, [many of] the servers themselves have wonderful names.

Plus, you have to love going to a three o'clock meeting in the Spawning Pool.

Man, if there were some way to get Marks and Spencer cereals affordably in the US, I'd be a weekly subscriber.

Google had some simpsons character printers in my building, IIRC.

I think this is enough for me to switch from protoss to zerg. Just the idea that I'm playing a Mac race is going to affect my psyche enough for me to stay in bronze forever ;p

Sounds fun if you do it for your home network, but profesionally you'll quickly appreciate embracing a more dull pattern of calling database machines db01, db02, etc, preproduction machines preprod01, preprod02, etc. And the sysadmin that will come after you will appreciate it even more.

Yep, you are basically making a new requirement that hires have to be Starcraft experts; and if not, then your naming scheme is totally unintuitive and overly verbose.

I'm a big fan of the function###.IATA (or ICAO) code.

So like db1.pao, web3.sfo, m22.sin...

I don't do the 01 02 thing because that falls down at 99. :-)

Yeah, now that I think of it I can't remember why I'm doing the 01 thing. Must be residual from my previous job where we used this pattern.

I remember reading through the Bind file and seeing

  # >10k machines? NEVER!
  streamer0001.xxx...

The primary reason for using 01 vs 1 etc. is because it sorts better without having to use fiddly sort options.

We (correction, I) keep dual names on all our machines. First the descriptive name lb01, websrv01, db01, etc. The second is the informal name all based on constellations and other space based entities like earth, star, taurus, corvus, leo, etc. Via Puppet[1], the MOTD of each server is generated with figlet[2] and other information so that the machine can be identified using all of it's names.

Most likely it's overkill - but I do like my pretty names as well.

[1] http://www.puppetlabs.com/

[2] http://www.figlet.org/

That's nice if you never repurpose a machine - so it makes plenty of sense for naming VMs. I've found it better to use arbitrary names for physical machines, though. Thanks to the prevalence of pop-culture fandoms on the internet it's pretty easy to find a list of names related to just about any theme you might desire, then when you get a machine you can just pop the next name from the list.

I'm sure CloudFlare uses "boring" names internally, but I was kind of nicely surprised that their DNS nameservers are named amy.cloudflare.com, paul.cloudflare.com, etc.

For some reason it just gave me a little tiny bit of excitement to get started on their service that wouldn't have been there if they were named the standard ns1., ns2., etc., and when you're just choosing from a random pool of DNS servers it doesn't really matter what the names are from an organization standpoint.

Glad you like the non-boring names for nameservers. There's actually method to why we use them and not boring names. There are 101 of names (50 women, 51 men) all between 2 - 4 letters long (Ed, Sara, John, etc.). They actually map to globally distributed clusters of servers, so each name doesn't correspond to a physical server in a single location. Instead of mapping to a physical server, we use the unique names to help verify you are the true owner of a domain you sign up in a way that is similar to how Google Apps uses a TXT record you add to your DNS to show you own a domain.

When you sign up for CloudFlare we provide you two unique nameservers when you sign up as part of the verification process. We can tell you are the owner of the domain you're registering if you change the nameservers to the two we provide you. In that way, it adds a layer of security in case two people register the exact same domain at the same time and we can't tell who should be authoritative. We figured that it was easier to remember and not typo two names rather than two random numbers (ns23 & ns67).

We commissioned an artist to draw 101 ninjas to represent CloudFlare's "Ninja nameservers." You can read more about them on the CloudFlare blog, including links to the Facebook page with all 101 illustrations:

http://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-igor-alex-phil-isla-a...

Ah, that is brilliant. Definitely way easier to work with than random numbers and/or TXT records.

Which falls over when db01 ain't a database machine anymore.

When I ran a large network, machines didn't physically move very much (at least, far less often than their logical functions changed); we had a naming scheme based on datacenter code, rack ID and rack position:

sjc02-X0501-19

would be the machine in sjc02, rack X05.01, unit 19.

Far more important than the actual scheme you use is consistency. Pick one scheme and stick with it. Easier when you pick the right scheme the first time. :)

That's great for SA's who are working in the racks.

Not so great for SA's that are administering the boxes remotely, devs trying to figure out what machine they are on, or teams trying to troubleshoot an issue.

If a box is no longer a db machine, just rename it to something descriptive.

For Xen instances I like dull and boring names because they are destroyable (easily).

For physical hardware, fancy names sounds pretty good, examples:

  * group of mountains -> db servers

  * group of bridges -> web services

  * group of cities -> app servers (Kinda fun to say "Portland is down!")

"A partitioned box with unix and windows. Windows OS named Marine, Unix OS named Infested Marine"

This just seems to be the wrong way around...

Just remember that Infested Marines are (stat-wise) more powerful ;)

Agreed.

In general I'm not sure how you could think the battle-worn/old-tech/modular visual style of the Terran race applies more to Windows than Unix.

Whereas terrifyingly-impressive testament to the brutal domination of an evolutionary niche and subsequent uncontrolled (uncontrollable?) growth seems like such a more-natural analogue for Windows.

And that's without even touching the gross, slimy, infested allusions. ;)

What sold me on unix being zerg was the concept of the swarm. Open source == powered by the hive mind.

Also I think it is safe to say that most everyday folk relate more to windows; same way most would relate more towards the human faction.

That said, you have good points!

Well, yeah. I'm sure the average person with 4 windows boxes at home wouldn't be wild about the idea of the creep seeping between the boxes...

Whereas unix folks are more likely to be nerdier and like that sort of thing ;)

Oh, and awesome scheme overall.

Another attractive reason for Windows being Zerg is it would make Ballmer Queen Bitch of the Universe (Gates would be the now-dead Overmind).

Buy box from Dell w/ Windows pre-installed: Marine.

Install Ubuntu partition: Infested Marine.

Works for me.

I'm ashamed to admit I'm using Jersey Shore names for my home network. "Situation", "Snooky", "Jwow", "Paulyd", etc.

you must be facing some serious trust issues when you try ssh'ing from one box to another.

I'm ashamed to admit that you spelled "Snooki" and "Jwoww" incorrectly.

"Here are some examples: you might use the planets in the solar system (I would never do this; who wants to have to wait for the discovery of new planets to buy your 9th computer?)"

For this reason, I use moons of our solar system in naming external hard drives at home. Figure it will last me a little longer, and saves me having to say to my wife in front of friends "Can you put the wedding photos on x?" and "Is x now full?" for certain instances of x towards the outer reaches of the system.

it's pronounced "urine us"

Well, butter my biscuits.

Here is the my naming convention:

1. Desktop computers are any land animal

2. Laptops are birds

3. Virtual machines and servers are any water dwelling creature

I try to progress through the alphabet. For example, "Buck" is an old, now defunct computer - "Gila" has only recently been retired.

My home network is based on the Batman universe:

My shiny new power tower (Windows 7): Batman

Same tower booted into ubuntu: TwoFace

NAS: arkham

Content Filter: gordon

Wifi SSID: TheRiddler

etc, etc

I've previously gone with various fun things (the main server at my previous job was named mainframe for ages), currently it's star wars characters as a friend of mine insists. Mine are all just named for their purpose. Laptop being playworkschool, my older server is called beast (hosting a civilization 5 replay generator). I don't like the idea of StarCraft though, but perhaps i'm just not such a big fan? I remember playing the first game a lot but i'm not a huge fan.

This is brilliant!!

The only issue I will have now is trying to convince my wife that SC2 is a healthy addiction - especially now that her iMac will be renamed 'Archon'.

Only works if you cannibalized that iMac from two other Macs.

also macbook air = dark templar? i think youd have to make an imac 30 out of two of those to make a dark archon.

Am I the only one who thinks that Windows, with malware, worms, and trojans, are more akin to the zerg? Whereas Linux, with its post-humanism, is akin to Terrans?

I was hoping this would be about Blizzard or battle.net, oh well. My own network machines are all named after space probes: pioneer, skylab, mercury, surveyor, gemini, apollo, voyager, etc. The university I went to (www.hsu.edu) named all their machines after trees (cyprus, pine, etc) - the school alma mater was about the pine trees that grew throughout the area, so a tree based naming scheme made sense.

I recall Hotmail's servers were revealed to have some funny names, including rotate-the-shield-harmonics.hotmail.com.

Server names at my university's CS department (and at least 2 other universities I know of) are biblical characters- Matthew, Mark, John, Gabriel, Mary, Martha, etc...

And, of course, Saul is a alias for Paul.

> And, of course, Saul is a alias for Paul.

Does it require you to login via Damascus?

i was expecting to read something about scalability of battle.net...

I just name mine after motorcycles I've owned. Crazily enough, I go through motorcycles faster than I go through computers, so it works.

I love starcraft...but honestly this is stupid. I mean seriously...you could waste your time in so many better ways .

> you could waste your time in so many better ways .

for example, pointing out how stupid this is.

Fuck you, dickwizard

i like the unimaginative names. www28.fe2.us.example.com

one huge portal used writers, philosophers and poets. try to spell Nietzsche to the operator during an outage.

Another job, they used star trek ship names. with the occasional klingon vessel here and there.

This is very intellectually unfulfilling. Second place? HN is approaching chain emails...

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