@+ magic variable

[Luis Motta Campos]

On Feb 15, 2007, at 5:10 PM, David Cantrell wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 04:18:59PM +0100, Luis Motta Campos wrote:
>> On Feb 15, 2007, at 3:21 PM, Gareth Kirwan wrote:
>>> Interesting server names you have there...
>>> We did have Bill and Ben, and a Dogbert at one stage.
>>> However now we just have boring functional names.
>>   Are functional names are those that matches with patterns like  
>> this?
>>   m{$company_acronym$serialnum}o
>
> Cutesy names don't scale.  And when a machine fails, knowing that it's
> "gunpowder" (the naming "convention" being types of tea) that's failed
> is a lot less helpful than knowing that it's the machine labelled  
> "mx3"
> in rack 2, room 37, building X.
>
> Yes, you could have another database that maps names to positions, but
> that's a pain in the arse for the users, and anyway, it's bound to  
> go out
> of date.

   You probably right.

   I kept only a dozen machines, and relevant localization data on  
intranet (internal answers only) DNS tables... fancy names and  
information in easy-to-find, easy-to-handle place.

   It was fun and harmless. :-) Of course another naming scheme would  
be adopted if we know in advance that our network would have 400  
machines...

--
Luis Motta Campos is a software engineer,
perl fanatic evangelist, and amateur {cook, photographer}