Cheap KVM Over IP?

An anonymous reader asks: "I've been looking for a cost effective (ie, cheap) way to remotely administer several servers running a variety of OS's, and would like to have a solution that would allow for monitoring of the bios on startup, etc (ie, not VNC). The most appealing solution is KVM over IP, which really just means a souped up KVM switch with something like VNC running on it, unfortunately all of the solutions I've been able to find are more expensive than I can justify spending. I've played around a bit with making my own Poor man's KVM over IP; I did this by purchasing a cheap (sub $50) VGA-to-NTSC convertor, then feeding it into a video card with NTSC input (the ATI All-In-Wonder Radion), and then by logging into a machine running Windows Terminal Services I'm able to watch the reboot process. Of course, this doesn't address the mouse/keyboard issue, and the quality isn't all that great. What I'm hoping is that someone else might have a suggestion on how to do this, preferably using Linux and the least hardware necessary. Does anyone have any suggestions or insights on ways to do this?" There are pre-existing solutions, but it seems they are all kind of pricey. Can any of you suggest cheap solutions (at or below $500USD) that could handle a farm of 5-10 machines?

"Here are the three approaches I found:

ViewProxy: They make the most economical for administration of multiple machines (by one person). Their ProxyView device plugs into your KVM just like it was a monitor/mouse/keyboard, and then does all the packetizing magic. Price is about $6k from what I can tell.

eRIC: These are the same guys who make the Rolf (Reboot on Lan), which is pretty cool. They make a card called Eric which replaces your normal video card with their card, which has a built in ethernet connection and allows remote control. The cheapest solution at about $700 but only would allow control of the machine it's installed in.

Avocent: I think the first to introduce the whole KVM over IP solution, they have KVM's with this sort of functionality integrated. Some of their products allow multiple users to multiple machine, which is a neat feature but not needed for my applications. Their units run from $4k on up."

Maybe use GRACE?

[jaxdahl]

Use GRACE from the earlier article and tell her to manage the computers.. only problem is that she might budge in your CS games.
heh
fp

Re:Well

[Sturm]

Hmm. You can see the BIOS on reboot using ssh? What are you doing, running ssh in ROM?

Sneaker Net

[drbaker]

A pair of Nikes cost less than $500 (but only just). That's about as close as you're gonna get.

Re:What on earth are you talking about?

[los furtive]

24bit colour resolution for accessing the BIOS? Cripes my computer must be out of date!

Re:Simple answer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask Slashdot:

Q: How do I make A do B?
A: Don't use A. C does B better. Only losers use A.

Moderation: +5 Informative
Usefulness: 0

Re:Here is a per server solution that is cheap.

[M-G]

. Get a Clysdale terminal server,

Uh, don't you mean Cyclades? I think someone needs a beer... :)

Re:Rebooting? Whats that?

[Wakko Warner]

Oh yeah...now I remember...I "rebooted" last month. Never again.

Just out of curiousity, what is your IP address?

- A.P.

Totally Wrong Dude

[MyHair]

The Slashdot Way involves duct tape, bailing wire, and, sometimes, a 386 running RedHat.

Dude, you're way wrong. Pentium 166's are now the preferred GNU/Linux "rescued from the garbage heap" platforms for these applications. And you've got the sometimes in the wrong place. It always involves Linux, although not necessarily RedHat. Duct tape and bailing wire are in the sometimes used category.

[Disclaimer: this is not a serious post, and I don't usually talk or type this way.)

Re:RealWeasel

[Anonymous Coward]

they embedded the following easter egg in their FAQ:

Q.

Is "slashdot" a verb?

A. Yes.

Great sense of humor for a business site

[John Jorsett]

Love their attitude:
"What sucks." "How we fixed it." "Why we're swell." "Asses saved."

Re:Totally Wrong Dude

[a2800276]

The Slashdot Way involves duct tape, bailing wire, and, sometimes, a 386 running RedHat.

Dude, you're way wrong. Pentium 166's are now the preferred GNU/Linux "rescued from the garbage heap" platforms for these applications. And you've got the sometimes in the wrong place. It always involves Linux, although not necessarily RedHat. Duct tape and bailing wire are in the sometimes used category.

Dude, you need to be seriously smacked on the side of the head with a clue-by-four (tm)! First off, no real haxors use RedHat boxen, cause they suxor. If you want to seriously use Li(g)nux you have to use Debian, cause thats what Linus and RMS use.

Secondly, if you're running like 4 TV-Cards doing realtime video (mpeg4) encoding of 4 s-vga video signals, we're talking like 60GB/sec bandwidth raw IO (per channel)! I think you would probably need SCSI for that.

Also, since the place I worked for did this with a bunch of old Sun's we had laying around, I think you would need more raw numbercrunching power than that P166 is going to provide. I swear to god, to get that type of throughput, you'll need at least a P250. You'll have difficulty overclocking your 166 to go a 250Mhz without using water-cooling.

Which is what we ended up doing on that Sun, too, btw. Man you've not played Quake Arena, till you've played it on an E450 with 24 UltraSparc2's overclocked from 450 Mhz to 600 Mhz, at first we though we would have to use liquid helium to cool the fucker.

[Disclaimer: this is not a serious post, and I don't usually talk or type this way.)

You do, too! I've been watching your talking and typing recently. It is I who doesn't usually talk this way. :)