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.

Data centers

Data centers are named as vendor initials (at time of lease signing) followed by the IATA code for a nearby major airport.

For example: our Dallas site is named codfw. The vendor is CyrusOne, and DFW being the large nearby airport. (Technically, Love Field airport is closer but less well-known.)

DC	Vendor	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
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 follow these conventions:

Cluster name: <identifier>-k8s (ex: dse-k8s, aux-k8s)
Control plane service name: <identifier>-k8s-ctrl
Ingress service name: <identifier>-k8s-ingress [-ro|-rw] for active/active or active/passive
Hostnames for control plane : <identifier>-k8s-ctrlXXXX.$site.wmnet
Hostnames for kubelets : <identifier>-k8s-workerXXXX.$site.wmnet

Servers

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.

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	Service Operations
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
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-wqds	OpenStack Hypervisor (libvirtd + KVM) for WMCS (dedicated to WDQS)		WMCS
cloudweb	WMCS management websites (wikitech, horizon, striker)	In use	WMCS
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	Service Operations
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	Service Operations (Supportive Services) & Release Engineering
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	Service Operations
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 code review (gerrit1001 in eqiad is currently used)	In use (deprecated)	Service Operations & Release Engineering
gitlab	Gitlab servers	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
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
mirror	public mirror, e.g. Debian mirror, Ubuntu mirror	In use	Infrastructure Foundations
miscweb	miscellaneous web server	In use	Service Operations
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)
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	Service Operations & Infrastructure Foundations
parse	parsoid	Soon in use	Service Operations
phab	Phabricator host (currently iridium is eqiad phab host)	In use	Service Operations
ping	Ping offload server	In use	Infrastructure Foundations
planet	Planet server	In use (mistake)	Service Operations
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)
wcqs	wikicommons query service	In use	Search Platform SREs
wdqs	wikidata query service	In use	Search Platform SREs
webperf	webperf metrics (performance team). See T179036.	In use	Performance & Service Operations
wtp	wiki-text processor node (parsoid)	In use	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.