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Suggestions for Unique Names for a Server Room? 240

clutch110 asks: "I have been tasked with coming up with a name for our soon-to-be server room. Our president is renowned for these small tasks. I was told to create something funny and not nearly as obvious as 'Company Server Room'. So I come in hope that your everlasting humor can help me complete my quest for the most unique server room name in existance."
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Suggestions for Unique Names for a Server Room?

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  • by Ratso Baggins ( 516757 ) on Sunday December 22, 2002 @06:09AM (#4939802) Homepage
    Then you could name it after a local Brothel. You know the place you go and pay to get screwed ;)

  • Name it... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 22, 2002 @06:32AM (#4939841)
    Blinkenroom
  • Name it.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Trikenstein ( 571493 ) on Sunday December 22, 2002 @06:38AM (#4939852)
    Das B00T!
  • by Chiggy_Von_Richtoffe ( 565992 ) <F_dysonNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Sunday December 22, 2002 @06:40AM (#4939857)
    if it's in the basement you can always call it:
    Moria
    The Ninth Circle
    (with individual servers named Faust, Mephisto, Lucifer, Phil, ect...ect...)

    If it's a small room, you can just stick a british "Police" sign on the outside (ala Dr. Who).

    if you are running really big iron, place a "Welcome to Urbana Illinios" sign on the door. (birth place of H.A.L., S.A.L., et al.)

    but if you have a DC fetish (come on we can smell our own here, it's Slashdot) you can choose from christening it the "Fortress of Solitude", "Bat Cave", "OA", or "S.T.A.R. Labs"

    BTW someone sugested "the Brothel" LOL, wouldn't be so sure that the suits wouold be happy to roll along with that one.

    --
    I bent my Wookie!
    • BTW someone sugested "the Brothel" LOL, wouldn't be so sure that the suits wouold be happy to roll along with that one.

      Maybe not, but extend it a littler further with:

      The Bunny Ranch
      The Mustang Ranch
      Miss Mona's Place (aka, The Chicken Ranch) ...and it might be a little more acceptable.
    • by gaudior ( 113467 ) <{marktjohns} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday December 22, 2002 @10:48AM (#4940223) Homepage

      If it's Linux, The Shire


      If it's Sun/HP/IBM, it's Imladris


      If it's Macintosh, it's Lothlorien


      If it's an MS Shop, then it's Mordor

      • Oddly enough... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by devphil ( 51341 )


        ...the college of engineering at my old university did something similar with the isolated subnets.

        There'd be a bunch of machines, called bilbo, frodo, gandalf, etc, on a net of their own, and diamond, ruby, emerald, etc, on a net of their own. For each net, another machine with two network cards would be their bridge to the outside world. Each of the network cards had its own name -- and this is where the geekiness comes out -- and the names would be for the same thing.

        So one card on the bridge would be rivendell, and the other would be imladris. One card would be gem and the other jewel. Things like that. One of the sysadmins had never read Tolkien, and the network topology of room 355 always confused him until someone explained the names.

      • according to anohter post of him [slashdot.org] :
        NIS lookups (Score:1)
        by clutch110 (528473) Alter Relationship on Thu 12 Dec 08:33PM (#4873590)

        I found out that our NIS server was giving those exact results. We had NIS clients on all Windows machines and of course all unix/Linux machines were nis too.


        my vote is for neil and bob [slashdot.org]

        Or just call it server room 2 (if you have only 1).
    • by TheFRC ( 174223 ) on Sunday December 22, 2002 @11:13AM (#4940282) Homepage
      no no no.

      call it "Springfield"

      call your servers Homer, Bart, Lisa, etc... :)

      just like every other sysadmin/simpsons freak out there.... hehe.
    • by cybermace5 ( 446439 ) <g.ryan@macetech.com> on Sunday December 22, 2002 @02:20PM (#4940938) Homepage Journal
      He forgot to mention that, at his president's request, the bathroom already bears the well-deserved title "Fortress of Solitude."

      With enough unnecessary drooping wires, flat panel displays, and strategically placed green cold cathode lamps, you could easily call it "The Nebuchadnezzar (or The Core thereof)" and the office would be called The City of Zion. The same decor would work for a Borg Cube theme, and all the "message from the sysadmin" letters would start with "We Are The Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile."

      I always wanted to do that. "Umm, my computer is broken, I can't do my work..." "YOUR COMPUTER IS IRRELEVANT. WORK IS IRRELEVANT. YOU WILL SURRENDER...Oh, sorry, permissions were set wrong, you should be ok now."
    • I've heard many stories about the server farm that NeXT used to have in their Redwood City, California office. Their "Bat Cave" was a small room packed full of black NeXT cubes and slabs. It's been rumored that much of the NeXT server farm still exists at Apple, as does a collection of every NeXT model and OS version on display for testing and "research".
  • How about... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Chexsum ( 583832 )
    "Off Limits" *shrug*
  • I Got one! (Score:5, Funny)

    by DA-MAN ( 17442 ) on Sunday December 22, 2002 @06:50AM (#4939872) Homepage
    How about you put up a sign called Engineering and have everyone refer to you as Scotty!
  • by Peter Clary ( 34038 ) on Sunday December 22, 2002 @06:53AM (#4939876)
    While you're at it, if you've got three large servers you can call them Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, and collectively "The Magi".

    And major system problems can henceforth be named/numbered after the Angels. "Uh oh - the Second Angel has attacked."

    OK, OK, I've just been watching Neon Genesis Evangelion. I'll go and lie down now...

  • ...in spirit of Ian M. Banks' Culture. True and computer-related (if just socially) at the same time. But can you really love a name that is not your own?
  • Call it... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by fobside ( 140397 )
    The Meat Locker.

    I don't know about you, but every server room I've been in has been freezing. Whenever I enter a server room for extended periods of time, I make sure I have a coat.
    • Then you should come to my company's server room. It set so they can take clients through on tours, and they WON'T need a coat. It's the warmest server room I've ever been in. In fact, due to their poor planning, there are spots in the room that actually make you sweat as they are so hot.

      Oh and they just built this room like 6 months ago, so it has 3 industral air conditioning units....

  • in a comic vein..

    "Danger Room"

    old movie vein

    "Emerald City"

    random vein

    "There be Monsters"
    "Mind the Gap"
    "Internet Invented Here"
    "Abandon all Hope"
    "The Shrine"
    "Rear Command Center"
    "Jedi Academy"

    "Janitors Closet"

    I could go all night.. but that would lame, and I need to catch up on my slee.....

    ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzz.....

  • When i have kids, I NAME THEM, and not my wife...
  • The room of lost souls?
    The room of eternal dispair
    The "mybosswantedmetocomeupwithanameforthis" Room
    The Bathroom
    The Transporter Room
    The...oh hey look a bunny!
    if you are running linux servers
    Anarctica
    The Penguin Room
    If you are running windows servers
    The Oh Please God(s) Kill Me Now room

    and my personal favorite...
    over/down/up there

  • soviet russia? it *is* a location, after all. in soviet russia, server... um... serves?... wait... damn! i messed that one up. wheres the delete key...
  • In the spirt of Peter's Evil Overlord list:
    65. If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment.
    • by oneiros27 ( 46144 ) on Sunday December 22, 2002 @08:04PM (#4942139) Homepage
      Washington DC has a combined sewer system. Basically, this means that there are not seperate sanitary (ie, toilets) and storm sewers. When there hasn't been rain in a while, leaves and other assorted trash will collect up in the storm sewers. When a hard rain comes, it will back up the storm sewers, and there's always a questions of exactly what else might have floated up from the drains.

      Our machine room just happens to be in a basement. [Until a couple of years back, there was a glass wall to the outside, too, so it obviously wasn't well planned] I think it was late 2000 (maybe early 2001), when we had a sewer backup on the same block our building was. There was an inch or so of standing water on the ground floor. There was sewage leaking from the ceiling above into our machine room, onto the machines, and into flooring [raised floor, so of course, all of the power runs through the floor].

      Needless to say, the smell was not so wonderful, although anything chunky was filtered out by the seeping through the concrete floor/ceiling. It did manage to cause the ceiling tiles in the machine room to crumble, and they had to replace anything that couldn't be easily disinfected in another room on that floor (chairs, cubicle walls, etc).
  • thought (Score:5, Funny)

    by nsrbrake ( 233425 ) on Sunday December 22, 2002 @07:55AM (#4939968) Homepage
    404: NotFound

  • by Hell O'World ( 88678 ) on Sunday December 22, 2002 @08:12AM (#4939995)
    ACHTUNG! Alles touristen und non-technischen peepers!
    Das machine control is nicht fur gerfinger-poken und mittengrabben. Oderwise is easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowen fuse, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken.

    Der machine is diggen by experten only. Is nicht fur geverken by das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseenen keepen das cotten picken hands in das pockets, so relaxen und watchen das blinkenlights.
  • A Server room name (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dWhisper ( 318846 )
    Call it: "Obsolete by the time you're done reading this sign"
  • CowboyNeal
  • Build a redundant button into the wall, and put a sign above it that says: "Do Not Push!". Then see how many people you can get to push it, and show it at X-Mas parties.

    You could always name it "Duke Nukem Forever Game in Progress"... sorry, thinking on the VaporWare thing.

    Or how about "1 box to run the webserver, 1 box for the mail, 1 box for the Quake game, 1 box for all the Mp3s = Pretty Good Server Room"
    • Build a redundant button into the wall, and put a sign above it that says: "Do Not Push!". Then see how many people you can get to push it, and show it at X-Mas parties.

      Does anyone remember 'the really big button that doesn't do anything' web page? That was hilarious.

      Anyway, if it's Linux, call it Anchorage, then put some cool arctic style posters up with penquins along the shoreline. We had a room call Bedrock once. The main server was called Wilma, other nicknames Barney, Fred and a little mac mail server was called Pebbles. I'm into simple names now, like 'The Hub'. Sort of like 'the pub' because everyone comes in to hang out, but there's no booze.
  • my favorite (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Enter through other door"
  • Triskedekaphobia (Score:2, Interesting)

    by justanyone ( 308934 )
    I used to work at UBS Warburg (Swissbank) and they had a meeting room that was titled 'Triskadekaphobia' on the 12th floor.

    Triskadekaphobia == Fear of the number 13.

  • mmmmm, eggs (Score:2, Interesting)

    by {8_8} ( 31689 )
    Call it The Basket. Then you can refer to the machines as Eggs.

    You could also call it the Don't Panic room, or the Champagne Room, or the One True Server Room, or the Fruity Pebbles room, or the Room Without A Window, or the Mush Room, or the Big Blue Room (or, alternatively, the Little White/Gray/Whatever Room).

    You asked for unique though. Most unique thing I can think of is to cat /dev/urandom or whatever that command is, then tack the output on the door. If you wanted to be really creative, you could put up a little LED sign that outputs /dev/urandom. That way your server room will always have a unique name. Everyone will just refer to it as the server room no matter what name you pick, so why not give them a good reason to use the generic term?
    • Most unique thing I can think of is to cat /dev/urandom or whatever that command is, then tack the output on the door.

      Hold it, don't take this dudes advice, that's how I managed to end up with a machine named 6962abc6-fc2b-453c-9558-e0764a99cef2
  • by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Sunday December 22, 2002 @09:47AM (#4940123) Homepage Journal
    If so, feel free to use this one:

    "FOR SALE: SLIGHTLY USED"

    - A.P.
  • Okay. I'll bite. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by AtariDatacenter ( 31657 ) on Sunday December 22, 2002 @09:54AM (#4940136)
    [airport code][descriptive code]

    For example: CHIWST, Chicago West datacenter. West could be the part of the city, or the part of the building. Add a number on the end if you're feeling kinky. Or maybe something obvious to the front like "DC".

    You won't get slammed if what you end up creating makes some logical sense, though. You could call it "CHARLIE" and name the next datacenter (if there is one) "DELTA".
  • ... for all the fantasies that the PHB will want you to create for him?
  • Too Many Secrets (Score:2, Interesting)

    by sig ( 9968 )
    How about a sign that says:

    SETEC ASTRONOMY
  • Names (Score:2, Funny)

    by mcmoyer ( 219649 )
    We call ours the Houston room. Even though the joke is very old now, everyone loves to say "Houston, we have a problem!"
  • Then call it "Goatse" Why? Because each server has one big GAPPING hole in it.
  • ... "Task is not a verb" room?
    • ...or the "Dictionary.com Says Otherwise" room:

      tr.v. tasked, tasking, tasks 1. To assign a task to or impose a task on. 2. To overburden with labor; tax.

      Another entry at dictionary.com even gives an example sentence:

      v 1: assign a task to; "I tasked him with looking after the children"

      So it is in fact correct to use "task" as a verb. (Now if you want to get really nitpicky, one might argue that it would be more correct to say "My boss tasked me...", since task seems to refer to the process of assigning a task, not receiving a task.)

  • by ka9dgx ( 72702 )
    Janitorial Supply
    Soiled Utility Closet
    Biohazard Disposal
    Radiography
    Carivore Den
    Depreciated Hardware
    OZ
    Office Supply
    Electron Containment
    or... just Office Storage

    --Mike--

  • Unexpected name (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CMiYC ( 6473 ) on Sunday December 22, 2002 @11:33AM (#4940352) Homepage
    One of my customers has a lab in an unlikely part of the building. On the door it says "Accounts Receivable." When you walk in, its one of the most validation labs I've ever seen. Instead of a funny name like "Everyone on slashdot complains of not sleeping because they think it makes them sound cool", name it another corporate department.
  • Ironic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by EvlG ( 24576 ) on Sunday December 22, 2002 @11:36AM (#4940371)
    Oh the irony of asking Slashdot for something unique and original...........
  • I've always liked the name "Bob"...
  • ... in (a) reference to the fact that only partial bugs remain (milli being 1/1000th), and (b) that's where they all end.
  • When we moved into our new digs, a sign on the server room already read "The Bat Cave". I just had to keep it there. Now we just need a red phone.
    • as mentioned in a previous comment, NeXT computer (founded by Steve Jobs, now owned by Apple) named their server room the Bat Cave as well. Mostly because it was filled to the brim with black NeXT cubes and NeXTstations.
  • Pit of Despair.

    What else can you call it when you're told to come up with a non-obvious name for something that needs a real name.

    Runner up: Sisyphus.

  • I've always been partial to the Neuromancer universe. Call the room "Villa Straylight", and the main sever "Wintermute". Then get your job title changed to "Chief of Turing Police".
  • Instead of putting a fixed nameplate on the door to the server room at the high school where I work, we mounted the kind that you can slide plates in and out of. The plan is to accumulate different plates over time and rotate between them.

    Here are the ones that we've used so far (It's only been a few months):

    • Authorized Personel Only
    • Inner Sanctum
    • Pumpkin Patch
    • Santa's Workshop

    Other suggestions are welcome (I plan to steal liberally from those already posted).

    It also seemed like a good idea at the time to inscribe, "Hey! Put that back" on the front (covered) side of the faceplate holder.

  • ... and use the proceeds to buy a new coffee pot or better coffee for the old coffee pot or something...
  • 'Serious' one: "Colossus World Control Headquarters" [imdb.com] (or something very close to this, I haven't seen the movie in a while.)

    Funny one: "Home of the WOPR" [imdb.com]

    ~Philly
  • WC (Score:5, Funny)

    by MarkusQ ( 450076 ) on Sunday December 22, 2002 @01:27PM (#4940743) Journal

    Ages ago I worked with someone who (with malace aforethought) got everyone to refer to the small room where we delt with all the network/phone interconnects as "the Wiring Closet", and then started shortening it to "the W. C." in memos, and finally (once everyone was numbed to it) put a sign on the door with just the letters "WC".

    And then he waited waited...

    --MarkusQ

  • You know how many restrooms have the icon for "men" and "women"? How about such a sign for "propeller-heads", after the old geek trend of wearing the propeller-beanie?
  • I named a test lab 'companyname Proving Ground' once. That could work for a server room also...

    I also named all the machines and user accounts (used for testing) after famous disasters, e.g. hindenberg, pinto, bush, etc.

    Full disclosure: I didn't come up with the name myself; thanks Baba.
  • ... The magic voodoo box room.
  • No manual entry for server room

    server room: nothing appropriate
  • you could call it :
    X forward...

  • nad name all your machines "alien ship 0001", so that way you can have aliens crashing at roswell.
  • reading:

    "This is not an exit..."

    Have everyone refer to you as "Patrick" or "Mr. Bateman".
  • is that anyone with a little social engineering can get a lead on what 'theme' you are using to name the boxen in that room. One place I worked had a complete Beatles theme going on; including some database passwords being obscure Beatles references like "28 if". The wallpapers on all of them were sketches of the band.

    Yet another place used X-Files - hundreds of names and references and insider jokes I couldn't even figure out with my wife being the X-Files nutjob she is...

    In a Coast Guard facility I worked in all the printers were named after Lord of the Rings characters - that's right we attached to Legolas to print our Remedy ARS reports.

    My favorite has always been the name for a PBX/Server room at a national training facility I once worked in: The Batcave. Fortunately, nothing else inside was named after the comic - could you imagine the Nortel Meridian console being named "Joker"?
  • Skynet

    That was the ultra computer in Terminator, then of course you have a good selection of names Sara, John, T1000, Arnold, Connor, Terminator, T2, T3 what have you.

    Of course, everyone will have to say "I'll be back" when they leave.

  • dont forget


    "Are you being serverd?"

  • A few suggestions: (Score:2, Informative)

    by adamy ( 78406 )
    The Boudoir [sp?]
    Somewhere Else
    The Operating Room
    The Swamp (ala M*A*S*H)
    Check Point Charlie (ah the days of the Cold War)
    Cryogenic Storage/The Fridge
    MIR
    Detroit
    The Bunker
    38 North Yankee (Ah the Korean War)
    Hiroshima/Nagasaki
    Chernobyl/Three Mile Island
    The Playground
    The Gulag
    Angband
    Compton
    Malkovich
    Birdland
    The Mother Ship
    The Dark TOwer
    Heritcorp
    Columbia Internet
    The Dimension of Pain
    Olympus/Kilamanjaro/Denali/K2/Everest
    The Satellight odf Love
    Paris
    Istanbul (not Constantinople)
    Dien Bien Phu/Dak Tow/Da Nang...
    Iwo Jima/Pearl Harbor/Midway...
    Dover, Delaware
    Epicenter
    The Brain
    Nirvana
    Yggdrasil/Asgard/Midgard/Bifrost
    The Bronx
    Kalevala/Pohjola (Lets hear it for Deities and Demigods)
    Lankhmar/Newhom
    Camelot
    The Citidel
    The Nucleus
    THe Moon
    The Core
    IT
    Oakland
    The Conservatory (With the Candlestick)

    These are climbs in Yosemite:
    Wyoming Sheep Ranch
    Zodiac
    The Nose
    Salathe
    Central Pillar of Frenzy
    Serenity Crack

  • by nbvb ( 32836 )
    Well, we don't have a name for our server room, but our JumpStart server is named Frostbitefalls. (Because it's so f'n cold in there!)

    Being that it jumpstarts hosts on a zillion subnets, it has other IP's (and DNS entries as appropriate, such as):

    Boris
    Natasha
    Sherman
    Peabody
    Bullwinkle

    and, of course:
    Flying-Squirrel (since rocky was already taken by the west-coast guys... they have a stallone theme goin' on)

    The TSM backup server is named wayback. Heh. I thought it was appropriate ...
  • also:

    • Mir II
    • W.O.P.R. (Remember War Games?)
    • Arthur Ashe Colloseum ("Server" room)
    • Beehive (all those little worker bee servers)
    • Motor Pool (military theme)
    • Aegis (like the hi-tech U. S. Navy ships)
    • Gonzo's Dressing Room (hey, I like the Muppet Show!)

    Just some thoughts . . .

  • The Pit? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Karora ( 214807 ) on Monday December 23, 2002 @03:27AM (#4943170) Homepage
    We name all of our servers on a theme, and this works well, in terms of isolating the names of the servers from their function. Our current theme is "philosophers" which can actually go on for a while.

    If you pick a theme for your server names at the same time, the name for the server room can be quite straightforward. Name them after fish and a roomful becomes a school. Name 'em after birds and it becomes a flock. There are lots of collective nouns out there just waiting to be used.

    So my suggestion would be to name them after orchestra instruments, so you could justify calling the place "The Pit" :-)

  • Any company that tasks a worker with coming up with a unique name for the server room clearly belongs in my fuckedcompany deadpool.
  • Do you lots of glass walls....then I would suggest for you...!
    The fishbowl!
  • The zoo was our name of one defunct companies server room.. The machines were beasts and a mix of os (linux/ms/sun). The machines were also given animal names.. It was nice and not too geeky.

  • I tend to arrive at companies when they are transitioning from "small" companies with a cool culture to corporate culture.

    At the last place that I worked, we had a really cool descriptive naming scheme that was funny and very descriptive of where the computers were. The one day the CEO decreed that we would use naming codes... database servers would be renamed db01 db02 db03... web www01 www02.

    Where I am now (a very large environment) hostnames are 9-12 characters long. There is actually a spreadsheet to name a server! You get gobblygood names like oapapa1234a1p, because every character needs to mean something. (That example would be an powerpc aix server running oracle in production with redundant power in production)

  • Put a placard on the door reading, "Manhatten Project", after the nuclear weapons programme, and name the servers after nuclear weapons, which could be descriptive, too. Fat man, little boy, then newer weapons: Trident, etc. Or, go total geek and name them after Quake III characters. Lucy, Sarge, Doom, Xaero, etc. There should be plenty of them to work with.
  • Why not generate some completely unique names? Instead of using names from some Tolkein or Trek universe, use some random name generator [freshmeat.net] to come up with some funny sounding ones. Just make sure they have lots of syllables, and sit back listening to people pronounce them!

  • Do a Google search for some of the famous European salt mines, and pick a name you like.

  • Of course, you could go for the seven dwarfs, (or was that eleven...). The names are certianly extensiable, short and different.


    Not only that, but they worked in a mine, so this theme could be replicated.


    Now, if there is a Snow White, or a wicked witch of the West.....

  • Name it after a historic event, a place in a well-known book, or perhaps even something from a movie.

    Suggests:
    The Matrix: Almost anybody gets that one
    NeverNever Land: For MS machines, because that's where data goes too in some cases...
    Tarterus (sp?): Depends on how much you like your job.

    Might also depend on what you name your servers, or what you plan to name them. You could have a theme place from a book, and name your servers after the characters.

    Which reminds me, I was going to ask a very similar question... as to what cool names people have heard for servers. We have ours named after Political Figures and trees here. I have the first server of my own being built and was thinking of naming it after a celestial body, or perhaps a galaxy
  • The Dimention of Pain!
  • Server Room or Computer Room. SHEESH! I do like neat names and stuff but what does a name have to do with how it works? Why do you have to come up with a neat name for it? Why can't you just call it what it is?

  • I'd recommend the adoption of the telecommunications standard of CLLI(tm) (COMMON LANGUAGE® Location Codes)
    More information on CLLI(tm) can be found at Common Language Products [commonlanguage.com].

    I wouldn't advise actually paying to register the codes, but I would follow the guidelines, they've worked for a long long time in the organization of the worlds largest network.

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