SRE/Infrastructure naming conventions

This page documents the naming conventions of servers, routers, and data center sites.
Our servers currently fall in broadly two categories:
* Clustered servers: These use numeral sequences with a descriptive prefix (see #Networking and #Servers). For example: db1001.
* Miscellaneous servers: These used unique hostnames (see #Miscellaneous servers). For example: helium. This naming convention is deprecated and not used for new hosts, but some older miscellaneous-named hosts still exist.
== Name reuse ==
Historically, we did not reuse names of past servers for new servers. For example, after db1001 is decommissioned, no other server will be named db1001. Ganeti VMs sometimes reuse hostnames, but bare metal typically will not.
The notable exception is networking gear, which are deterministically specified by rack. For example the access switch in Eqiad rack A8 is named asw-a8-eqiad. If it is replaced, the new switch will take the same name.
All hardware in the datacenter space is tracked in Netbox, which can be used to check for existing hostnames for both hardware and ganeti instances.
__TOC__
== Data centers ==
Data centers were traditionally named as vendor initials (at time of lease signing) followed by the IATA code for a nearby major airport. For example, for Eqiad data center the vendor is Equinix, and IAD the large nearby airport. This convention was used from 2003 upto 2023. Because vendors go through acquisitions, and original initials no longer apply after some time, starting with Magru in 2023, only the airport code is used along with a freely chosen prefix.P&T Weekly Status Updates: 2023-12-04, Wikimeida Foundation, Google Docs (restricted)
DC 	Vendor (originally)	Airport Code
codfw	CyrusOne 	DFW
drmrs	Digital Realty 	MRS
eqdfw	Equinix 	DFW
eqiad	Equinix 	IAD
eqord	Equinix 	ORD
eqsin	Equinix 	SIN
esams	EvoSwitch 	AMS
knams	Kennisnet 	AMS
magru	Ascenty 	GRU
ulsfo	United Layer 	SFO
== Networking ==
Naming for network equipment is based on role and location.
This also applies to: power distribution units, serial console servers, and other networking infrastructure.
Name prefix	Role 	Example
asw 	access switch 	asw-a1-eqiad
cr 	core router 	cr1-eqiad
mr 	management router 	mr1-eqiad
lsw 	leaf switch 	lsw1-e1-eqiad
ssw 	spine switch 	ssw1-e1-eqiad
msw 	management switch 	msw1-eqiad & msw-b2-eqiad
pfw 	payments fire wall 	pfw1-eqiad
ps1 / ps2 	power strips/distribution units	ps1-b3-eqiad
scs 	serial console server 	scs-a8-eqiad
fasw 	Fundraising access switch 	fasw-c-codfw
cloudsw 	Cloud L3 switches 	cloudsw1-c8-eqiad
== OpenStack deployments ==
[Datacenter Site][numeric identifier](optional dev suffix to indicate non-external non-customer facing deployments) - [r (if region)][letter for AZ]
* Current Eqiad/Codfw deployments will not fully meet these standards until rebuilt: [eqiad0 (deployment), eqiad (region), nova (AZ)]
Deployment	Region 	Availability Zone
eqiad0 	eqiad0-r 	eqiad0-rb
eqiad1 	eqiad1-r 	eqiad1-rb
codfw0dev 	codfw0dev-r	codfw0dev-rb
codfw1dev 	codfw1dev-r	codfw1dev-rb
== Disks ==
* Arrays must use the Storage array device role in Netbox.
*Naming follows two conventions:
:* Array is attached to a single host:
::* hostname_of_host_system-arrayN
:::* Example: ms2001-array1, ms2001-array2
::* all arrays get a number, even if there is only a single array.
:::* Example: dataset1001-array1
:* Array is attached to multiple hosts
::* Labs uses this for labstore, each shelf connects to two different hosts. As such, the older single host naming scheme fails.
::* servicehostgroup-arrayN-site
:::* Example: labstore-array1-codfw, labstore-array2-codfw
== Kubernetes ==
Any cluster that is not the main wikikube cluster should use a consistent identifier and follow these conventions:
* Control plane service name: <identifier>-ctrl
* Ingress service name: <identifier>-ingress [-ro|-rw] for active/active or active/passive
* Hostnames for control plane : <identifier>-ctrlXXXX.$site.wmnet
* Hostnames for kubelets : <identifier>-workerXXXX.$site.wmnet
== Servers ==
=== Datacenter numbering ===
Any system that runs in a dedicated services cluster with other machines will be named after their role/service task. As a rule, we attempt to name after the service, not just the software package. Also, servers within a group are numbered based on the datacenter they are located in.
Data center 	Numeral range	Example
pmtpa / sdtpa (decommissioned)	1-999 	cp7
eqiad 	1000-1999 	db1001
codfw 	2000-2999 	mw2187
esams / knams 	3000-3999 	cp3031
ulsfo 	4000-4999 	bast4001
eqsin 	5000-5999 	dns5001
drmrs 	6000-6999 	cp6011
magru 	7000-7999 	cp7001
When adding a new datacenter, make sure to update operations/puppet.git's /typos file which checks hostnames.
=== Hostname prefixes ===
The full list of hostname prefixes currently in use can be gathered from a cumin host () with:
sudo cumin --no-color 'A:all' 2>/dev/null | nodeset -S '\n' -e | sed 's/\..*//g' | sed 's/[0-9]\{4\}//g' | sort | uniq
Be aware that hosts with dev in their name could have the dev part before or after the 4 digits number.
Name prefix 	Description 	Status 	Points of contact
acmechief 	ACME certificate manager 	In use 	Traffic
acmechief-test 	ACME certificate manager staging environment 	In use 	Traffic
alert 	Alerting host (Icinga / Alertmanager) 	In use 	Observability
amssq 	esams caching server 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
amslvs 	esams LVS 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
analytics 	analytics nodes (Hadoop, Hive, Impala, and various other things) 	Being replaced by an-worker 	Data Platform SREs
an-conf 	Analytics Hadoop cluster zookeeper quorum 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-coord 	Analytics Hadoop cluster coordination node (Presto and Hive) 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-db 	Data Platform Postgresql database cluster 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-druid 	Druid Cluster (Analytics) 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-launcher 	Analytics job scheduler node 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-master 	Analytics Hadoop cluster namenode 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-mariadb 	Data Platform mariadb databases (analytics_meta) 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-presto 	Analytics Presto cluster workers 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-redacteddb 	analytics dedicated mariadb servers with sanitized data, as per the wikireplicas 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-tool 	Analytics tools node (YARN UI, Turnilo 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-test-client 	Analytics Hadoop-test client (equivalent to stat servers, but for test cluster) 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-test-coord 	Analytics Hadoop-test cluster coordinator (Hive, Presto, MariaDB) 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-test-master 	Analytics Hadoop-test cluster namenodes 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-test-ui 	Analytics Hadoop-test YARN UI 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-test-worker 	Analytics Hadoop-test cluster workers 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-test-druid 	Analytics Druid-test worker 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-test-presto 	Analytics Presto-test worker 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
an-web 	Analytics webserver (wikistats, published datasets 	 	
an-worker 	Analytics Hadoop cluster workers 	In use, replacing analyticsNNNN 	Data Platform SREs
an-airflow 	Airflow instances provided to client teams by Data Platform Engineering 	Being migrated to dse-k8s 	Data Platform SREs
aphlict 	notification server for Phabricator 	In use 	Collaboration Services
apt 	Advanced Package Tool Repository (Debian APT repo) 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
aqs 	Cassandra cluster for Analytics Query Service (+others) 	In use 	Data Persistence
archiva 	Archiva Artifact Repository 	Being decommissioned 	Data Platform SREs
auth 	Authentication server 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
authdns 	Authoritative DNS (gdsnd) 	In use 	Traffic
backup 	Backup hosts 	In use 	Data Persistence
backupmon 	Backup monitoring hosts 	In use 	Data Persistence
bast 	bastion host 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
censorship 	Censorship monitoring databases and scripts 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
centrallog 	Centralized syslog 	In use 	Observability
cephosd 	Ceph servers for use with Data Engineering and similar storage requirements 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
certcentral 	Central certificates service 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
chartmuseum 	Helm Chart repository ChartMuseum 	In use 	Service Operations
civi 	Fundraising CiviCRM 	In use 	FR-Tech SREs
cloud*-dev 	Any cloud role + '-dev' = internal deployment (PoC, Staging, etc) 	In use 	WMCS
cloudbackup 	Backup storage system for WMCS 	In use 	WMCS
cloudcephmon 	Ceph monitor and manager daemon for WMCS 	In use 	WMCS
cloudcephosd 	Ceph object storage data nodes for WMCS 	In use 	WMCS
cloudceph 	Converged Ceph object storage and monitor nodes for WMCS (only used for testing) 	No longer used 	
cloudcontrol 	OpenStack deployment controller for WMCS 	In use 	WMCS
clouddb 	Wiki replica servers for WMCS 	In use 	WMCS, with support from DBAs and Data Platform SREs
cloudelastic 	Replication of ElasticSearch for WMCS 	In use 	WMCS
cloudgw 	Cloud gateway server for WMCS 	In use 	WMCS
cloudmetrics 	Monitoring server for WMCS 	In use 	WMCS
cloudnet 	Network gateway for tenants of WMCS (Neutron l3) 	In use 	WMCS
cloudservices 	Misc OpenStack components (Designate) for WMCS 	In use 	WMCS
cloudstore 	Storage system for WMCS 	In use 	WMCS
cloudvirt 	OpenStack Hypervisor (libvirtd + KVM) for WMCS 	In use 	WMCS
cloudvirtan 	OpenStack Hypervisor (libvirtd + KVM) for WMCS (dedicated to Analytics) 	No longer used 	
cloudvirt-wdqs 	OpenStack Hypervisor (libvirtd + KVM) for WMCS (dedicated to WDQS) 	No longer used 	WMCS
cloudweb 	WMCS management websites (wikitech, horizon, striker) 	In use 	WMCS
collab 	Spare hardware for single-host-per-dc Collaboration services (Phabricator, Gerrit, Contint) 	Planned 	Collaboration Services
conf 	Configuration system host (etcd, zookeeper...) 	In use 	Service Operations
config-master 	host running the config-master site 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
contint 	Continuous Integration 	In use 	Collaboration Services
cp 	Cache proxy (Varnish) 	In use 	Traffic
cumin 	Cluster management (cumin/spicerack/debdeploy/etc...) 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
datahubsearch 	DataHub OpenSearch Cluster - used for DataHub 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
dataset 	dataset dumps storage 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
db 	Database host 	In use 	Data Persistence
dbmonitor 	Database monitoring 	In use 	Data Persistence
dborch 	Database orchestration (MySQL Orchestrator) 	In use 	Data Persistence
dbprov 	Database backup generation and data provisioning 	In use 	Data Persistence
dbproxy 	Database proxy 	In use 	Data Persistence
dbstore 	Analytics private mediawiki database replicas 	In use 	Data Platform SREs & Data Persistence
debmonitor 	Debian packages monitoring 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
deploy 	Deployment hosts 	In use 	Service Operations
dns 	DNS recursors 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
doc 	Documentation server (CI) 	In use 	Collaboration Services
doh 	Wikidough Anycasted 	In use 	Traffic
druid 	Druid Cluster (Public) 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
dse-k8s-etcd 	etcd server for the kubernetes cluster of Data Science and Engineering 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
dse-k8s-ctrl 	control plane server for the kubernetes cluster of Data Science and Engineering 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
dse-k8s-worker 	worker node for the kubernetes cluster of Data Science and Engineering 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
dumpsdata 	dataset generation fileset serving to snapshot hosts 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
durum 	Check service for Wikidough 	In use 	Traffic
elastic 	elasticsearch servers 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
es 	Database host for MediaWiki external storage (wiki content, compressed) 	In use 	Data Persistence
etcd 	Etcd server 	In use 	Service Operations
etherpad 	Etherpad server 	In use 	Collaboration Services
eventlog 	EventLogging host 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
flink-zk 	Dedicated zookeeper cluster for Flink 	in use 	Data Platform SREs
flowspec 	Network controller 	In use (testing) 	Infrastructure Foundations
fr* 	Fundraising servers, e.g. frdb, frlog, frpm (puppetmaster) 	In use 	fr-tech SREs
ganeti 	Ganeti Virtualization Cluster 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
ganeti-test 	Ganeti Virtualization Cluster (test setup) 	in use 	Infrastructure Foundations
gerrit 	Gerrit servers (code review) 	In use 	Collaboration Services & Release Engineering
gitlab 	Gitlab servers (code review, CI, CD) 	In use (phab:T274459) 	Service Operations
grafana 	Grafana server 	In use 	Observability
graphite 	Graphite server 	In use 	Observability
icinga 	Icinga servers 	In use 	Observability
idm 	Identity manager (Bitu) 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
idp 	Identity provider (Apereo CAS) 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
install 	Installation server 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
kafka 	Kafka brokers 	No longer used 	
kafka-main 	Kafka brokers 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
kafka-jumbo 	Large general purpose Kafka cluster 	In use 	Data Platform SREs & Infrastructure Foundations
kafka-logging 	Logging/o11y Kafka cluster 	In use 	Observability
kafkamon 	Kafka monitoring (VMs) 	In use 	Data Platform SREs & Infrastructure Foundations
karapace 	DataHub Schema Registry server (standalone) - Used for DataHub 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
knsq 	knams squid 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
krb 	Kerberos KDC/Kadmin 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations & Data Platform SREs
kubernetes 	Kubernetes cluster (k8s) 	In use 	Service Operations
kubestage 	Kubernetes staging cluster 	In use 	Service Operations
kubestagetcd 	Etcd cluster for the Kubernetes staging cluster 	In use 	Service Operations
kubetcd 	Etcd cluster for the Kubernetes cluster 	In use 	Service Operations
lab 	labs virtual node 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
labcontrol 	Controller node for WMCS (aka "labs") 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
labnet 	Networking host for WMCS 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
labnodepool 	Dedicated WMCS host for Nodepool (CI) 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
labpuppetmaster 	Puppetmasters for WMCS 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
labsdb 	Replication of production databases for WMCS 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
labservices 	Services for WMCS 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
labstore 	Disk storage for WMCS 	In use (deprecated) 	WMCS
labtest* 	Test hosts for WMCS 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
labvirt 	Virtualization node for WMCS 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
labweb 	Management websites for WMCS 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
lists 	Mailing lists running Mailman 	In use 	Legoktm and Ladsgroup
logging-hd 	Logging Cluster - OpenSearch data node (hdd class) 	In Use 	Observability
logging-sd 	Logging Cluster - OpenSearch data node (ssd class) 	Planned 	Observability
logging-fe 	Logging Cluster - OpenSearch/OpenSearch-Dashboards/Logstash node 	Planned 	Observability
logstash 	opensearch/logstash/opensearch-dashboards node 	In use 	Observability
lvs 	lvs load balancer 	In use 	Traffic
maps 	Maps cluster 	In use 	Content Transform Team and hnowlan
maps-test 	maps test cluster 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
matomo 	Matomo analytics serer (formerly named Piwik) 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
mc 	memcached server for mediawiki 	In use 	Service Operations
mc-gp 	memcached gutter pool server for mediawiki 	In use 	Service Operations
mc-wf 	memcached servers for wikifunctions 	In use 	Service Operations
mc-misc 	memcached servers for anything else in need of memcached 	Planned 	Service Operations
ml-staging 	Machine learning stanging env etcd and control plane machines 	In use 	ML team
ml-serve 	Machine learning serving cluster (ml-serve-ctrl* are VMs for k8s control plane) 	In use 	ML team
ml-cache 	Machine leaning caching nodes 	In use 	ML team
ml-lab 	Machine learning experimenting/sandbox machines for ML models (similar to statboxes, but owned by ML). 	In use 	ML team
mirror 	public mirror, e.g. Debian mirror, Ubuntu mirror 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
miscweb 	miscellaneous web server 	In use 	Collaboration Services
ms 	media storage 	No longer used (deprecated) 	Data Persistence (Media Storage)
ms-backup 	media storage backup generation (workers) 	In use 	Data Persistence (Media Storage)
ms-be 	media storage backend 	In use 	Data Persistence (Media Storage)
ms-fe 	media storage frontend 	In use 	Data Persistence (Media Storage)
mutual-os 	Mutualized (shared) opensearch cluster 	planning 	Data Platform SRE
mw 	MediaWiki application server (MediaWiki PHP webservers, api, jobrunners, videoscalers) 	In use 	Service Operations
mwdebug 	MediaWiki application server for debugging and deployment staging (Ganeti VMs) 	In use 	Service Operations
mwlog 	MediaWiki logging host 	In use 	Service Operations
mwmaint 	MediaWiki maintenance host (formerly "terbium") 	In use 	Service Operations
mx 	Mail relays 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
mx-out 	Outbound mail relays 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
mx-in 	Inbound mail relays 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
nas 	NAS boxes (NetApp) 	Unused 	
netflow 	Network visibility 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
netmon 	Network monitor (librenms, rancid, etc) 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
netbox 	Netbox front-end instances 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
netbox-dev 	Netbox test instances 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
netboxdb 	Netbox back-end database instances 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
nfs 	NFS server 	Unused 	
peek 	Security Team workflow and project management tooling 	In use 	Security Team
ocg 	offline content generator (PDF) 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
ores 	ORES cluster 	In use 	Machine Learning SREs
orespoolcounter 	ORES PoolCounter 	In use 	Machine Learning SREs
oresrdb 	ORES Redis systems 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
pay* 	Fundraising servers, e.g. payments, pay-lb, pay-lvs 	In use 	FR-Tech SREs
pc 	Parser cache database 	In use 	SRE Data Persistence (DBAs), with support from Platform and Performance
pdf 	PDF Collections 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
people 	peopleweb (people.wikimedia.org) 	In use 	Collaboration Services
parse 	parsoid 	Soon to be no longer used (deprecated) 	Service Operations
parsoidtest 	parsoid 	Soon to be used 	Service Operations
phab 	Phabricator host (currently iridium is eqiad phab host) 	In use 	Collaboration Services
ping 	Ping offload server 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
planet 	Planet server 	In use (mistake) 	Collaboration Services
pki 	PKI Server (CFSSL) 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
pki-root 	PKI Root CA Server (CFSSL) 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
poolcounter 	PoolCounter cluster 	In use 	Service Operations
prometheus 	Prometheus cluster 	In use 	Observability
proton 	Proton cluster 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
puppetboard 	PuppetDB Web UI 	In use 	Service Operations
puppetdb 	PuppetDB cluster 	In use 	Service Operations
puppetmaster 	Puppet masters 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
puppetserver 	Puppet Servers 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
pybal-test 	PyBal testing and development 	In use 	Traffic
rbf 	Redis Bloom Filter server 	Unused 	
rcs 	Obsolete:RCStream server (recent changes stream) 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
rdb 	Redis server 	In use 	Service Operations
registry 	Docker registries 	In use 	Service Operations
releases 	Software Releases 	In use 	Service Operations
relforge 	Discovery's Relevance Forge (see discovery/relevanceForge.git, T131184) 	In use 	Search Platform SREs
restbase 	Cassandra cluster for RESTBase service (+others) 	In use 	Data Persistence
rpki 	RPKI#Validation 	In use 	Infrastructure Foundations
sca 	Service Cluster A - Includes various services 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
scb 	Service Cluster B - Includes various services. It's effectively the next generation of the sca cluster above	No longer used (deprecated) 	
schema 	Event Schemas HTTP server 	In use 	Data Platform SREs & Service Operations
search-loader 	Analytics to Elastic Search model data loader 	In use 	Search Platform SREs
sessionstore 	Cassandra cluster for sessionstore 	In use 	Data Persistence
snapshot 	Data dump processing node 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
sq 	squid server 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
srv 	apache server 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
stat 	statistics computation hosts (see Analytics/Data access) 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
storage 	storage host 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
stewards 	special hosts for wiki stewards (see T344164) 	In use 	SRE collaboration services
testreduce 	parsoid visual diff testing 	In use 	Service Operations
thanos-be 	Prometheus long term storage backend (swift storage) 	In use 	Observability / Data Persistence
thanos-fe 	Prometheus long term storage frontend (swift proxy software) 	In use 	Observability / Data Persistence
thumbor 	Thumbor 	In use 	Service Operations (& Performance)
titan 	Thanos frontends 	In use 	Observability
tmh 	MediaWiki videoscaler (TimedMediaHandler). See T105009 and T115950. 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
torrelay 	Tor relay 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
urldownloader 	url-downloader 	In use (added in T224551) 	Service Operations
virt 	labs virtualization nodes 	No longer used (deprecated) 	
vrts 	VRTS ticketing system 	In use 	Collaboration Services
wcqs 	wikicommons query service 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
wdqs 	Wikidata Query Service "full" graph - deprecated (why? See T337013 ) 	In use (deprecated, being replaced by wdqs-main, wdqs-scholarly, and possibly wdqs-categories)	Data Platform SREs
wdqs-categories 	Wikidata Query Service Deepcat search graph 	in testing, see T374016 	
wdqs-main 	Wikidata Query Service graph split - main. See T337013 	In use 	Data Platform SREs
wdqs-scholarly 	Wikidata Query Service graph split - scholarly. See T337013 	In use 	
webperf 	webperf metrics (performance team). See T179036. 	In use 	Performance & Service Operations
wikikube-ctrl 	Wikikube Kubernetes cluster control plane 	In use 	Service Operations
wikikube-worker 	Wikikube Kubernetes cluster worker nodes 	In use 	Service Operations
wtp 	wiki-text processor node (parsoid) 	No longer used (deprecated) 	Service Operations
xhgui 	A graphical interface for PHP debug profiles. See Performance/Runbook/XHGui service. 	In use 	Performance & Service Operations
dragonfly-supernode	Supernode for Dragonfly P2P network (distributing docker images) (T286054) 	In use 	Service Operations
=== Miscellaneous servers ===
Historically, we used per-datacenter naming schemes for any one-off or single host. This included any software that wasn't load balanced across multiple machines, or general task machines that could cluster (to an extent) but required opsen work to do so.
Instead of being named for their purpose, these hosts were named according to a naming convention for their datacenter:
* Hosts in eqiad were named for chemical elements, in order of increasing atomic number.
* Hosts in codfw were named for stars. Stars in the Orion constellation were reserved for fundraising (Alnilam, Alnitak, Bellatrix, Betelgeuse, Heka, Meissa, Mintaka, Nair Al Saif, Rigel, Saiph, Tabit, Thabit).
* Hosts in esams or knams were named for notable Dutch people.
These naming schemes are deprecated in favour of specialized cluster names above. Even if you're certain that the foobar service will only ever use a single host, you should name that host "foobar1001" (or 2001, 3001, etc. as appropriate to the datacenter).
One-off names were easy to come up with—especially for machines that did more than one kind of thing, where it's hard to identify a single descriptive name—but they were also opaque. Engineers had to know that the eqiad MediaWiki maintenance host was "terbium" and the codfw package-build host was "deneb." Naming these machines "mwmaint1001" and "build2001" is easier for sleepy oncallers to remember in an emergency, and friendlier to new hires who have to learn all the names at once.
Some older hosts in production still use these naming schemes, but new hosts should not use them.
Category:Operations policies