What is in a machine name?

As I started to play with OpenVZ, it dawned on me that the cost of
machines are cheap. It is very cheap to have a specific (virtual)
machine for a specific purpose.

Already, I had several specific functionalities I wanted to have
implemented: intranet-wide (read: home) file server, intranet-wide
access to scanner, public-facing web server, public-facing mail
server, fresh OS base to test installation procedures on, etc.

Now they can each be implemented in its own machine. There will be
enough machines for me to justify entertaining some
system-administration practices, like impersonal machine naming.

I had always been naming my machines by the name of people I liked,
had crushes with, or dated. I cannot continue with that schema without
jeopardizing my marriage and lying to myself as I cannot start liking
someone just because I need to name a new machine.

A machine naming convention that I've always liked is one that encodes
the purpose and asset ID into the name. For example: WWW001 is a web
server machine, MAIL001 is a mail server machine, and WS001 is a
workstation machine. Some even go further by including physical
location information: DC06MAIL001 could be a mail server in data
center #6 in Washington DC.

My need for my simple system is simple. I choose the simple prefix "M"
which stands for machine. The names will be M01, M02, M03, and so on.
Reaching M99 is a strong indication that the system is no longer
simple and is a justification to use a more sophisticated naming
convention.

The machine name forms the basis for the canonical DNS name. Machines
with a single IP have similarly named DNS entries under the 'machine'
subdomain, e.g.: m01.machine.example.com.

Multi-Homed machines (having multiple IPs) also have similarly-named
DNS entries pointing to each of its interface. The entry names should
be descriptive enough to identify the interface, e.g.:
m01-internet.machine.example.com and m01-lan.machine.example.com if
m01 is an Internet-facing firewall machine.

Each interface may be assigned additional alias DNS name (CNAME
records). For example, if m01.machine.example.com is originally a
machine in LAN and is being upgraded to serve as an Internet-facing
firewall machine, then m01.machine.example.com then cease becoming
the canonical name. It may be dropped or added as an alias.

Publicly-Accessible servers also benefit from having an alias DNS
name, e.g.: www.example.com may be an alias for
m54.machine.example.com.

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