I 100% agree that metadata like timestamps and machine IDs, if you care about them, should have their own columns.
I only disagree with:
> It'd be much more orderly for each node to have a sequential ID
I've outlined some reasons above why a random ID has advantages over a sequential one.
I run Postgres in prod so I can use purely random UUIDv4, but for those running mysql or mssql, UUIDv6 and the like are a useful compromise between sequentiality and randomness. The fact that they happen to use timestamps as the source of sequentiality is only an implementation detail.
I only disagree with:
> It'd be much more orderly for each node to have a sequential ID
I've outlined some reasons above why a random ID has advantages over a sequential one.
I run Postgres in prod so I can use purely random UUIDv4, but for those running mysql or mssql, UUIDv6 and the like are a useful compromise between sequentiality and randomness. The fact that they happen to use timestamps as the source of sequentiality is only an implementation detail.