When I was growing up, my dad had some sort of email server or ftp server or something for the university he taught at. I have childhood memories of trying in odin@[university].edu. My first fileserver at home was just called The Vault, but when I put together a dedicated VM server, it became Odin. The long term VMs that I host on there are named after some of the lesser Nordic gods. I also have a Pi running NginX for reverse proxy passing, so after the latest season finale of Loki, that seemed like an appropriate name for that device.
DomainCode-SiteCode-Function##
ACME-USCA-WEB01 ACME-GERM-DC02
I worked for a company where the previous IT dorks named the servers after startrek ships. It's cute at home. Had to rename everything and readdress the whole organization.
I don't name my machines anything special, but I've started naming my internal hard drives/samba shares after planets, and external drives after moons.
Chevy - Main server, rarely goes down unless I missed something on Ford
Ford - Test bed for Chevy. Questionable shit happens here.
UFO - primary desktop, most of the stuff happens here. Old Alienware case with new insides.
Sat - dreaming laptop, used for streaming from UFO.
Tron - VPN
Edit: Forgot my Wi-Fi router Colson, it dies often due to aging hardware.
My servers/desktops are named after celestial bodies:
- Neptune
- Saturn
- Ceres
- Pluto
My mobile devices are named after space ships from sci-fi shows and the like:
- Rocinante
- Donnager
- Normandy
monokuma - my PC
monomi - my Android phone
monokid - my laptop
monosuke - my PostmarketOS phone
junko - main VPS
mukuro - main local server
hifumi - Jellyfin/*arr server
etc.
Since I'm kinda fan of Terry Pratchett, I naturally have HEX at home.
my storage machine is luggage, and i use discworld names that kind of are relevant to the gunction for everything else in my network, too. my robot vacuums name is lu-tze for example.
Mine are named after fictional robots, computer programs, or AI. It started with my wifi being GLaDOS for 5 GHz and Wheatley for 2.4 GHz. I thought it was funny that everyone could immediately tell that Wheatley was the slower one. Over time, I continued the trend. My gaming PCs are named after characters from the Mega Man X series (desktop is Zero, laptop is X, steam deck is Sigma). My macs are named EVE and WALL-E. My server is named Sibyl System (from Psycho Pass).
Oh dang. How fun. I never even considered thematically making my machines! Mine are super mundane.
- machine - main server
- osmc - Kodi media box for tv
- kmac - old iMac running kde neon
- tunnelpi - raspberry pi 4 wireguard tunnel access point
- mini- Mac mini my wife uses for day to day use.
Now I’m going to have to find a theme and start renaming machines! I might go with Magic the Gathering as my theme.
Edit: formatting, and added MtG as potential theme
Edit 2: fixed stupid autocorrect error (theatrically to thematically)
I'm a BJCP certified beer judge, so I am using beer styles for my server names. Pilsner is my main server, my gaming rig is Stout, the Digital Ocean droplet is Marzen, and the kids' computer was Rootbeer.
The devices usually get some descriptor of what they look like...
For example I have:
- Flatboard - an old core2duo era Xeon bare tower server board I got on Craigslist for $20 that lives on a custom backplate and no case (thus, is flat)
- OrangeBox - an Orange Pi 5 in a aptly-colored orange case I custom modeled and 3d printed for it
- DumbBrick - my retired gaming PC built from a t30 dell tower server that is basically a nondescript black brick
Years ago, I was in a University library and they had named all the printers after characters from the first three Star Wars movies.
I liked the idea of having a theme, so I use shark names. White, Blacktip, Mako, Hammerhead, etc etc.
Mine are all anime characters. Currently I have:
- Mizuho (Onegai Teacher)
- Misaki (To Aru Kagaku no Railgun)
- Washu (Tenchi Muyo)
- Siesta (Zero no Tsukaima)
- Derfflinger (Zero no Tsukaima)
nuc because it is a nuc and vps because it is a vps.
remnant, partially because it's a frankestein of second hand from wallapop and dusted pieces from my old computers, partially as a weeb reference to the world of RWBY lol
Pipi caca
Ant, Beetle, Caterpillar, Dragonfly
I use Futurama-based names. It started with my wifi network, which I named Zoidberg, because why not. The NAS is Infosphere, the media server is Hypnotoad, etc.
Devices at home are named after Autobots and remote devices are named after Deceptions.
My SYNOLOGY NAS that's just shy of being used for too much stuff (96% CPU means I've got 4% left babyyyy) is, was, and will forever be: Senpai.
That way people (my wife and parents) notice it in the network list.
Mine are all named after dairy products.
I have whey as the main docker host and first mon, milk as my main x86 osd, leben-{1,2} as more (arm64) osds, kumis-{1,2,3} as more (arm64) mons, kefir and ghee are old x86 mons (maybe Ill repurpose them as docker hosts someday. I have lassi-{1,2} as rpi 3b+ but they arent in use at the moment because I dont need them yet. Ive got pytia as my spine, and yoghurt as my edge, leaf is l2 so no hostname.
My main windows gaming pc is butter, the wifes pc is something similar but its not turned on and I cbf checking router logs.
sol
terra
mars
venus
hubble
nibiru
voyager
groundcontrol (router)
deepspacenetwork1 and 2 (wifi access points)
Bob
My main server is called Master and my server for testing is called lenno because it's an old Lenovo PC. Ich habe two zfs pools on my main server called Avalon and the newest one is called Pegasus. I named them after the two galaxies from the Star Gate TV Shows.
My first server was a used Dell r420, so I named it Pyrocumulus, after clouds that form over fires or volcanoes
i like fruit, so I have kiwi, mango, ...
I just kinda vaguely name them after what they do and how big they are:
smol: my tiny little 2 bay Synology NAS that I'm no longer using
medium: my R620 with 4x 18TB drives that is my current NAS (medium, because it's larger than my previous NAS). Is also a k3s worker and provides NFS PVCs.
big: my old full-tower gaming rig that's a k3s worker and runs my Home Assistant VM
molecule: my current mini-ITX gaming rig and primary computer, also serves as the k3s master node and runs a lot of my home automation stuff. I think I picked molecule because it's REALLY tiny (it's in a Dan Cases A4v2, I think?) and it has a bunch of small stuff running on it (containers and pods)
monolith: my old T440p laptop. It's a large, black, featureless slab that doesn't do much
slab: my new Framework 13 laptop. I just kinda looked at it and said, "that's a nice slab of metal"
All of the above running Linux. I tinkered with Ubuntu for the NAS (because I heard Ubuntu was good at ZFS), but I still absolutely hate Ubuntu, so it's all Arch Linux.
My Unraid NAS and media server is called Madmartigan. The Proxmox server running Home Assistant, second Pihole instance and my bookmark manager and such is called Willow. My raspberry pi that I use for testing and such is called Brownie.
- space
- magnet
- qdivison
- pi3
- pi3v2
Two metal gear references: Arsenal gear and Outer Heaven.
And then the container ship company that blocked the canal, Evergreen
All having references to be able to hold many containers/weapons
Birds. Servers are big, strong, imposing birds. Mobile devices are small and flitting birds. Things in between are birds in between. I've put some thematic value on some of the bird names (a showy bird for media, etc.).
My proxmox server is named Atlas. It hosts a Truenas VM called truenas, a ubuntu server lts vm called Poseidon for docker container hosting a homeassistant VM called homeassistant and a second VM for docker containers called Neptune where I want to gradually move and reorganize my services as required.
I also have a raspberry pi as a general testserver called eileithya and a Synology Nas named Hestia
DataOfDoom
hugin, munin (ML compute, storage) NAS-T sidebox-1 to 4
yep wild mix
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