Code names [LWN.net]

Code names

Posted Mar 6, 2010 17:48 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: Fishy business by jeremiah
Parent article: Fishy business

Product code names used to be actual code names, not at all the same thing as naming a file server "penguin." A code name is designed to obscure the identity of the thing named.

I worked for IBM in the days when it was the leader in just about every product line it had. Competitors had to wait to see what IBM produced in order to know what to produce themselves as alternatives. IBM had a lot to lose from people finding out what projects were going on in the company, so it not only gave the projects code names, but changed those names every year or two to keep the outsiders guessing as internal documents leaked out.

It's my impression that few companies today benefit from keeping it a secret what they're working on (I mean what the goal is, not how the company is doing it). So the name of a project isn't code at all -- just a handle.

"Telephone handset" would not be an adequate name, since the company probably discusses lots of potential handset products other than Swordfish. "Dream" (what the users will eventually call it) is not really practical because you want to work on a project long before it's time to nail down the marketing strategy. So we're left with arbitrary names.

Now, to the topic of giving cute names to things like servers as opposed to naming them after their function: I struggled with this for a long time and eventually concluded that purely symbolic (content-free) names are the best way to go, because it gives me more flexibility. Renaming occasionally seems to be a bigger pain than the additional step of connecting the name with the thing named every time.

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Code names

Posted Mar 6, 2010 18:27 UTC (Sat) by jeremiah (subscriber, #1221) [Link]

Maybe that's what's tickling the back of my head, that they aren't code names, but handles. And
I find handles non-informative. There just seems to be this urge out there for cuteness. I'm not
going to win any argument on the topic, but it's nice to know what peoples reasons are.

As for server name, you can see my other post, which basically says virtualization and pool based
hardware enables s to names servers after services, because we can slice and dice a lot more
easily than we used to.

I love being able upgrade a server, and make sure that the one service running on it works, and
cal it a day. Or to clone a server, upgrade the close, and drop it into place, and delete the
original, without having to point to some other ip address etc, and then run down everything
that's screwed up, because we used a different name. And the best over all is being able to build
a completely new infrastructure one server/service at a time, and dropping them into place w/o
having to change anything else, or even being able to roll back those changes by putting in/
bringing up the old server.

Code names

Posted Mar 6, 2010 19:50 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Um, we could always do the slice-and-dice dance. You give the server a
meaningful, memorable name, and a role-based CNAME.

Code names

Posted Mar 6, 2010 21:59 UTC (Sat) by jeremiah (subscriber, #1221) [Link]

yeah, but why should the names be different? esp. when all of the iptables rules, and routing are
by ip, and not name. And what could be more meaningful than staffvpn.x or clientvpn.x or dns.x or
ntp.x, web.y, etc? By keeping the hostnames the same, automated searches against centralized
syslogs never have to be changed, dns never has to be changed. I'm curious what benefit you
would get from sliceing-and-diceing?

Code names

Posted Mar 8, 2010 16:04 UTC (Mon) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]

I would say "well, if we can't trust you to spell 'slicing' and 'dicing' properly, then..." but Jon wants us to be polite and respectful.

So I won't. :-)

Seriously, though: the issue has to do with replacing machines. There are often cases where you *cannot* have two machines existing in the world with the same name; most of these have to do with commercial licensing and other related stupidities.

If you're in such a regime, then you have no other real choice: the machine's "true name" has to be something new, different, and arbitrary -- the last because we've already established that it *can't* be the same name as the box it's replacing, which would then have to already have the functional name.

If you're replacing one outbound FTP server with another already configured server, you drop in the replacement, test it, and then "swing" the DNS CNAME to point to it (as telco guys used to swing jumpers on switch frames at 2am on Sundays on Big Switch Cuts), and you're done.

No muss, no fuss.

But AEleen, Evi, or Tom can probably explain this to you much better than I can. :-)

Code names

Posted Mar 8, 2010 17:37 UTC (Mon) by jeremiah (subscriber, #1221) [Link]

I never said I was trustworthy or that I could spell. Only that my life has been easier after moving
from code names to role based names, in a virtualized environment w/ one service per server.
Perhaps a hybrid approach would work best. With dns-1 and dns-2 as the hostnames and dns
as the CNAME? I realize that I'm beating a dead horse here, but let me continue anyway, since
this discussion will make me better at what I do, and therefor is more about understanding, than
arguing a point.

I have 40+ fibre channel LUNS, in most cases each LUN represents server/service. Each has a
number and WWN associated with it. I can map a WWN to a NAME which is represents a target
WWN. no DNS here. I also have FC switches which need mapping as well, zone names etc. I have
8 blades each of which has the ability to have 16 named LPARS. I also have wiki-documentation
for each complete mapping (IP,name,MAC,LUN,LPAR,VLAN,etc). The only thing that is constant in
this mess is the service that the machine is performing, and the IP address where it can be
found. Perhaps this is where the issue arises, in that in everyone else's experience, the IP
address and the Service are disconnected as well. When I bring a new replacement system online
I either copy it from a hardened clean copy, or the currently running copy, and run that LUN on a
different blade where I can test it etc. Then shut both the old and the new systems down, switch
the LUN mapping, and bring the new one up. This takes 2 - 5 min tops, which in my
environment, is fine. I don't have to change any DNS entries, logging, intrusion detection, etc. All
I have to do is change one entry on a fibre-channel controller.

After reading what I have written, maybe I am 'slicing' and 'dicing' but at a different level, than
CNAMES. Because my LUNS are just numbers that I can't really control. And If I could, they would
become DNS-1,DNS-2,DNS-3. I will say though, that when trying to diagnose a problem, it
helps immensely to have strict naming conventions on every piece and configuration.

Real machines vs. single-serving

Posted Mar 9, 2010 10:53 UTC (Tue) by dion (subscriber, #2764) [Link]

Something strange happens when you start using tons of virtual machines, in stead of maintaining every machine and putting more services on it, every virtual machine tends to become a wrapper around a single service, once that service is no longer needed the vm is simply deleted.

In the case of virtual machines that are created on demand and are sure to get nuked when they have served their purpose, I can certainly see a good reason for using function oriented names, because that name doesn't ever grow stale and once you have 17 similar servers doing pretty much the same thing then it becomes quite boring to come up with names and equally pointless.

I have no need to name single-use build slaves, so they are simply xp-1, xp-2, xp-3 and so on, no human typically interacts with the machines in their entire lifetime (about a day) before they are deleted and re-created from the master image.

For real, actual machines I still want an abstract name that have nothing at all to do with function and point function oriented CNAMEs at it as needed.