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I want to make it easier to distinguish between server's connected via rdp, without draining resources too much.

Do any of you use any wallpaper, and if so, can you show any examples?

Or do you use a custom desktop background color?

Or do you use something like bginfo?

Are there any good wallpaper sites, specifically for server wallpaper? To help distinguish what server you are on...

Thanks..

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  • I am using windows not linux, but those are all great ideas...thank you.
    – crosenblum
    May 26, 2010 at 19:00
  • The main point is to have different color set/themes, so that I can avoid mistaking 1 for the other, which is of high importance.
    – crosenblum
    Jun 25, 2010 at 21:02

5 Answers 5

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We use bginfo, gives a quick overview of everything with a little effort and no expense.

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  • We have servers with Rackspace, and by default they use bginfo to display the hostname, machine IP address, and username. Here is the link for bginfo for anyone that hasn't used it before: technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897557.aspx
    – Greg Bray
    May 26, 2010 at 23:43
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    We use bginfo and color code the background. Blue are critical production servers. Orange are non-critical infrastructure. Green are critical infrastructure. Purple for testing.
    – Chris S
    May 27, 2010 at 0:35
  • Care to post any screenshots? I don't need details, just color and what kind of data to show.
    – crosenblum
    Jun 25, 2010 at 21:03
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Different solid colored backgrounds, and on *nix machines different colored prompts.

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We have a GPO set on our servers OU that runs a very simple logon script. It copies across the BGInfo exe, a logo, a couple of small vbscripts and a template .bgi file. Then it runs the template through BGInfo.

The output looks like this. We don't distinguish between dev and prod because that's done via the host names, which are always visible. Number of admins, uptime and host type (physical/virtual) are vbscripts that BGInfo uses when it runs. I can post them up if they're useful to anyone.

If your dev/prod/test/uat servers are seperated in AD by OU, or on seperate domains, then jigging a script like this to apply seperate wallpapers would be trivial. Just attach a slightly different script/BGI to each OU.

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We made simple custom backgrounds for all our servers. Just a simple solid colour background - all the same colour, although this question makes me think that a couple colour codes would be good - and put the server name in large letters on the top of the screen, and in small letters just above the start menu. Most of the time, even if we have windows open on the console, one or the other of the names will be visible. Most of our servers have names based on their function, so the name is a reminder of what the server is for.

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I primarily administer linux servers, but I give them all different color terminal prompts. E.g. user@hostname ~/current/dir$ in red for production, yellow for test, green for dev, blue for our misc service machines, purple for cloud clients, etc, etc, etc. Anything that helps you associate will do, I doubt you really need a "server wallpaper site".

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