Comments on: Name our cool computer cluster...

Question: Name our cool computer cluster...

bkudria — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:58:19 -0800

Name our cool computer cluster.

So a small group of us are building a computer cluster, and we need to name it something ... cool. But, we're completely out of ideas! Please help, hivemind.

Technical details:
14 Dual quad-core Intel Xeon @1.86GHz, with 6Gbps Infinband interconnect, running Debian Linux, with netboot for the nodes.

Guidelines: pretty much anything goes, I think. Puns, parodies also appreciated. Or just something cool-sounding. We probably shouldn't mention Dell or Intel, but other technical references are cool.

By: grouse

grouse — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:59:35 -0800

kitty

By: sanko

sanko — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:00:20 -0800

Frankowulf.

By: kuujjuarapik

kuujjuarapik — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:06:20 -0800

ringworm.

By: synaesthetichaze

synaesthetichaze — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:08:23 -0800

I love naming servers, but I never go for technical puns. Usually sci-fi or something else nerdy. I would go with Horde, personally.

"Log in to the Horde immediately!"

Come on, that's awesome.

Anything that references the collective nature of the cluster would probably be appropriate... Borg, or maybe The Collective; Hivemind! If you are an Asimov nerd, Gaia. If you like the Ender series too ridiculously much, you could call it Jane. Heinlein? Mike (or HOLMES). I think HAL might be a little too broad, you know.

Also, I'm guessing it's a Beowulf cluster? You might want to go with Beowulf puns, like Grendel, or Hrothgar. Grendel is a great, euphonious, Anglo-Saxon name if you like that kind of thing, that is my second choice after...

HORDE!

By: BitterOldPunk

BitterOldPunk — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:09:29 -0800

"The Dog Named Mark Farner from Grand Funk Railroad".

Obscure Butthole Surfers reference. See, they had a dog, and they made the dog a member of the band, and they named the dog "Mark Farner from Grand Funk Railroad" so they could say, "'Mark Farner from Grand Funk Railroad' is in our band!"....anyway, it'd abbreviate nicely to "The Dog".

I need to get out more often.

By: sien

sien — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:15:09 -0800

It's in your question, coming out of your subconscious.

Please help, hivemind.

Call it hivemind, or perhaps 'The Hive'.

By: chrisamiller

chrisamiller — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:16:58 -0800

Amino acid names make great server names. Valine, alanine, proline, tyrosine, etc.

By: baggers

baggers — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:17:44 -0800

I vote for "Bolsheviks". Then you can call each of the servers after a Russian revolutionary. "Dang! Lenin has crashed again, Stalin has a memory fault and needs to be purged, and Trotsky has an icepick through his head!"

By: craniac

craniac — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:26:07 -0800

Latin names for strains of anthrax or other diseases. Or characters from Lost.

By: fandango_matt

fandango_matt — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:26:12 -0800

The Ring.

By: EndsOfInvention

EndsOfInvention — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:26:44 -0800

What Are The Civilian Applications?

By: Nice Guy Mike

Nice Guy Mike — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:29:51 -0800

Are you looking for names for each terminal as well?

Cluster - Sol-G2V or Sun

Terminals (Planets and Major Moons) - Choose from:
Mercury
Venus
Terra, Luna
Mars, Phobos, Deimos
Ceres
Jupiter, Ganymede, Callisto, Io, Europa
Saturn, Titan, Mimas
Uranus, Oberon, Miranda
Neptune, Triton
Pluto, Charon

By: fandango_matt

fandango_matt — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:30:52 -0800

What about an acronym? You could call it the Clustered Linux Array of Processors, or the CLAP.

By: synaesthetichaze

synaesthetichaze — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:34:47 -0800

Hmm, none of my previous suggestions lend themselves to naming the individual nodes in the cluster. My secret plan for when I am in charge of my own installation is to call the overall "thing" (in your case the cluster, in my case, probably the Hardware Management Console) Eldar, and name every server after a Tolkien Elf.

You can have that one. I will probably never get to use it.

By: indiebass

indiebass — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:35:19 -0800

I would advise "Gestalt", which is probably a little too on-the-nose....

I am also a fan of naming the computers all individual names, as well as the collective. Gestalt is soooo good though! ^_^

By: singingfish

singingfish — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:37:38 -0800

Personally I go for names of characters from the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

By: monkeymadness

monkeymadness — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:40:44 -0800

Team Discovery Channel

By: theora55

theora55 — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:44:33 -0800

Just what variety of Geeks are you?
The Forest, with individuals named for trees: Oak, Maple, Hemlock
The Shire, with Gandalf, Frodo, Bilbo, Aragorn
Mordor, with Darktower, Sauron, Nazgul
Enterprise, with Kirk, Scotty, Uhuru
My favorite naming scheme was one in which Novell servers were named for Greek gods, Windows servers for Roman gods.
Or call it House, and name them after the usual suspects: lupus, vasculitis, sarcoma, etc.

By: hangashore

hangashore — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:44:43 -0800

There's always Pleiades, which is about the best-known star cluster out there.

But I think sien has it - hivemind.

By: cosmicbandito

cosmicbandito — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:48:40 -0800

"We are LEGION"

By: cosmicbandito

cosmicbandito — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:50:19 -0800

make that LEGION

By: damn dirty ape

damn dirty ape — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:52:24 -0800

Silicon. 14 is the atomic number of silicon.

Fortnight. self-explanatory

Temperance. The 14th tarot card.

Agrippa Postumus dies. What a great name. Call it Agrippa or posthumous.

Or name it hivemind. and name each machine after the first 14 posters in this thread. "Dude, someone investigate the race condition on BitterOldPunk and reboot fandango_matt."

By: kcm

kcm — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:59:08 -0800

Name it Chicomostoc, after the ancient Aztec gods. Then you can name each node after a god:

Huitzilopochtli
Tezcatlipoca
Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli
Chalmecatecuchtlz
Tonacatecuhtli
Xochiquetzal
Mictlantecuhtzi
Ixtlilton
Chiconahuiehecatl
Coyolxauhqui
Mictecacihuatl
Macuilcozcacuauhtli
Bob
Nanahuatzin

By: malaprohibita

malaprohibita — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:07:20 -0800

I'll second 'Hivemind', and suggest that you name each of the servers after a member of Metafilter: matthowie, jessamyn, cortex, etc.

By: malaprohibita

malaprohibita — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:09:27 -0800

Of course, you should make sure to spell 'mathowie' correctly, unlike myself. ugh

By: dws

dws — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:13:35 -0800

Call the cluster Scoville, and names the boxes after peppers.

By: SirStan

SirStan — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:14:43 -0800

Dudeyougotacluster

Name the nodes something stupid, so you can easily find them (ie, dygac_01 -> dygac_14)

By: SirStan

SirStan — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:15:21 -0800

Also; I feel ashamed no one has suggested hal.

By: infinitewindow

infinitewindow — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:16:31 -0800

Black Mesa

Nodes can be Freeman, Alyx, Dog, Eli, Breen, Mossman, Kleiner, Barney, Headcrab, Combine, Crowbar, City17, Shotgun and Grenade.

By: tracert

tracert — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:20:16 -0800

This is a monstrosity of computational power, I would name is accordingly:

Behemoth
Leviathan
CRUSHERDESTROYER

"ping CRUSHERDESTROYER". Best terminal session ever.

By: weapons-grade pandemonium

weapons-grade pandemonium — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:21:05 -0800

Lanny

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:25:55 -0800

Name them all after Iain Banks culture ships.

By: juv3nal

juv3nal — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:26:58 -0800

By: PercussivePaul

PercussivePaul — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:27:00 -0800

Just don't do what the nano group at my school did and name it "schroedinger":

>ssh shrodinger
ssh: shrodinger: Name or service not known
>ssh shroedinger
ssh: shroedinger: Name or service not known
>ssh schrodinger
ssh: schrodinger: Name or service not known
>asdfjklhasklj
asdfjklhasklj: Command not found.

also: do NOT listen to kcm.

By: pokermonk

pokermonk — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:28:35 -0800

Epic Rack

Zerg Rush

Bootsy Collins

Rory's First Cluster

East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94

By: Mach5

Mach5 — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:33:28 -0800

If you can't find something here, or here, you fail.

By: Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:35:42 -0800

Think about a name, and then a collective name. At a company in Seattle, we named a three-server cluster after species of salmon -- King, Coho and Chinook. The cluster itself, as a collective noun, then came be to known as "the Fish," as in "Did you replicate to the Fish?"

Examples:

Zeus
Hercules
Apollo
-- > Olympus

Mercury
Venus
Mars
--> The Planets

By: signal

signal — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:42:48 -0800

Name the cluster itslef "The Culture", and then name the individual servers after culture ships.
Don't leave off the prefixes, so: "GSV What Are The Civilian Applications?"

By: devilsbrigade

devilsbrigade — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:50:51 -0800

I'm sure you can find 14 well-liked beers. For bonus points, the server labels can be made from the side of a 6 pack. I'd work for you in a second.

By: rob511

rob511 — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:59:35 -0800

Fustercluck

By: pracowity

pracowity — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:03:54 -0800

> Fustercluck

I was just getting there.

Call it Cluster Fuck (CF in official documents. Or "Claudia Ferrari"?), with individual terminals with women's porn names such as Jenna, Linda, Christy, Bambi, Misty, Cherry, Nikki, Ginger, Amber, Savannah, Destiny, and Traci, and (or?) men's porn names such as Ron, Peter, John, Dirk, Buck, and Harry. You can find plenty o' names from here.

By: pokermonk

pokermonk — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:16:21 -0800

P-Funk Clu-Star

nodes: Bootsy, Catfish, GClinton, Stingray, Fuzzy, Big Foot, and perhaps Funkenstein just to really paint the white house black

whenever hardware maintenance must occur, repeat after me,
"Tear the roof off the sucker."

By: pokermonk

pokermonk — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:16:56 -0800

(it's got to give up the funk)

By: phrontist

phrontist — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 17:35:54 -0800

No dude it's got to be The Mothership if you go with P-Funk names.

By: a robot made out of meat

a robot made out of meat — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:00:09 -0800

My old school went with tree names. There are lots of short, memorable trees. Birch, Ash, Pine, Oak, Maple, Apple, Olive, Pear. There's not a natural order or hierarchy. There's enough that you can avoid the ones that are other software names if you want. "SSH into Pine?? What the hell?"

By: tim_in_oz

tim_in_oz — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:08:34 -0800

ORAC

By: xorry

xorry — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:09:10 -0800

Oohh! The mothership! You could add Mr. Wiggles the Worm and Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk.. Starchild... I'm out.

By: DJWeezy

DJWeezy — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:32:23 -0800

the crushinator

By: jmcmurry

jmcmurry — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:20:56 -0800

I lobbied to call ours WOPR. Didn't take, unfortunately.

By: bkudria

bkudria — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:29:42 -0800

To clarify, all our nodes are just numbered sequentially, for easy reference. They are all identical anyway, and we don't really address them individually.

But keep the names coming, we are looking at all of these. I guess we need a team name too (this is for a competition, and yes, I'll thank Mefi)

By: cowbellemoo

cowbellemoo — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:47:31 -0800

building off infinitewindow, I nominate The Combine

By: mpls2

mpls2 — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:00:32 -0800

buttersnuff

By: Quietgal

Quietgal — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:11:34 -0800

Subatomic particles are highly geeky: hadron, lepton, baryon, muon, etc. A cluster of them adds up to an atom, so you've got the parts and the whole covered.

(Love the Norse gods, but the Aztecs are way worse than schroedinger!)

By: Cat Pie Hurts

Cat Pie Hurts — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:24:28 -0800

Mypants:

Mypants just went down.
Someone just broke into mypants!
Mypants is running way too hot.
Mypants is out of space.
Check the logs on mypants.
Analyze yesterday's core dump, ad infinitum.

By: Zach!

Zach! — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 21:04:51 -0800

British ships of the line, e.g., Indefatigable, Alacrity, Surprise, Invincible, Illustrious, Victory, etc..

By: casarkos

casarkos — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 23:25:38 -0800

Grapes. Chardonnay, pinot noir, syrah, Concord, muscadine...

By: DrtyBlvd

DrtyBlvd — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 03:08:12 -0800

Venereal Diseases.

Sorry. I believe they're called STDs' now.
(Musta missed that memo)

By: Geckwoistmeinauto

Geckwoistmeinauto — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 05:06:37 -0800

Ikea furniture. Worked well for us.

By: ALongDecember

ALongDecember — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 06:22:01 -0800

Take a look at some animal collective nouns. Maybe ones that refer to penguins?

colony of penguins
crèche of penguins
huddle of penguins
parcel of penguins
rookery of penguins

By: SeanMac

SeanMac — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 22:58:11 -0800

I nominate 'Singularity'.

By: bkudria

bkudria — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:45:55 -0800

Update, everybody: we chose "Strangelove" as in "Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned..." etc etc. I've marked best answer to those whose names we seriously considered. Thanks, everybody!