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? (Score:2, Funny)
heh
fp
Bandwidth Issues? (Score:2, Insightful)
What on earth are you talking about? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What on earth are you talking about? (Score:1)
Re:What on earth are you talking about? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What on earth are you talking about? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:What on earth are you talking about? (Score:2)
Re:Bandwidth Issues? (Score:2)
Re:Bandwidth Issues? (Score:2)
RealWeasel (Score:5, Informative)
Re:RealWeasel (Score:2)
Re:RealWeasel (Score:2, Funny)
Q.
Is "slashdot" a verb?
A. Yes.
Great sense of humor for a business site (Score:3, Funny)
"What sucks." "How we fixed it." "Why we're swell." "Asses saved."
RealWeasel and Other Issues (Score:4, Informative)
This is a market hole (Score:2)
simple solution for 5 machines: (Score:1)
price: $200.
Re:simple solution for 5 machines: (Score:2)
Re:simple solution for 5 machines: (Score:1)
Serial Console (BIOS Redirection) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Serial Console (BIOS Redirection) (Score:1)
Re:Serial Console (BIOS Redirection) (Score:2, Interesting)
All BIOSes has had that as long as I remember. (Which is more than 10 years.)
why not a specialized tcp/ip stack, vnc, and ethernet driver as well?
They are quite limited in the amount of code it has space for. Originally they could only keep at most 64KB. Today some are manufactured with more, but it can only be used during boot before loading the OS. When the OS gets loaded it switches to the small size, so all drivers must fit into 64KB to be available to the OS.
This is also not an area in which much development is going on. In the days of DOS, the drivers in the BIOS was actually being used all the way. But today every OS has its own drivers, the BIOS is only being used during boot. So as soon as the computer can boot and get the OS into memory, nobody really cares about the BIOS any more. The BIOS API used by DOS and loaders has changed very little in the last years. This API does not include networking, and it probably never will. It has been many years since a new device got available through this API, most changes are just to deal with development in already supported units. Today BIOSes does support harddisks larger than 504MB. The last new device that has been added support for in the BIOS is the ATAPI CDROM, but this is really only suitable for boot, and it actually didn't change the API, it merely emulates a floppy.
Wasn't there a project to put linux in the bios along with a primitive firewall?
Yes. [lanl.gov]
PC Weasel (Score:1, Redundant)
makes a card that allows for this... but i havent looked at their product in over a year now - so it might even have greater functionality than last time I looked...
but it allowed for bios monitoring etc...
and you can test one of their cards out from their site. (used to be over telnet)
Re:PC Weasel (Score:2, Informative)
One comprimise might be to use the small slender rodent adapter to capture your post and then use a VNC server for daily operation but that sound almost as kludgey as what he is using now.
Hopefully someone will come up with a smaller/cheaper process for IP KVM's and/or economies of scale will kick in and the price on these units will come down.
One final thought that could be very dangerous, what is the possibility of hacking the BIOS on the motherboard to dump the post out the serial or ethernet ports, heck if there is enough free code space you might even be able to configure through the serial. (note IANAEE and IANACS)
Good luck!
Re:PC Weasel (Score:3, Informative)
Re:PC Weasel (Score:2)
I, on the other hand, did the same via a remote KVM over IP solution. When the patch hosed my system, I just logged back in via the kvm, booted into single user mode and backed out the patch.
The ladies here, by the way, say hello. Though they don't really remember your name anymore.
Re:PC Weasel (Score:2)
I think it is you who is mistaken...
Mod this up (Score:2)
try cyberguys (Score:3, Informative)
or else try product # 104 1150 on http://www.cyberguys.com
it's a KVM "extender" that works over cat 5 for 500 feet. i don't know who makes it, but the cyberguys catalog had it. this plus a KVM switch on each end of your setup might be enable you to do what you want...
Re:try cyberguys (Score:2, Informative)
CONSOLE EXTENDER CE-220 [cyberguys.com]
vga - serial cards (Score:2, Redundant)
http://www.realweasel.com/pcivga.html [realweasel.com].
Raritan (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Raritan (Score:3, Informative)
If you want connectivity over IP you can add the TeleReach option to the Paragon box (the one mentioned above).
Cheap alternative (Score:2, Insightful)
Check out Raritan [raritan.com]. They have a wide range of such products. Not sure about prices though.
are you serious? (Score:1)
RealWeasel (Score:1, Redundant)
Dell and other companies come with their own similar solutions - add on boards that allow powering off the server. There are some nice links off of the realweasel site to other places with similar devices.
Otherwise, buy Sun or any other hardware platform that comes with serial console standard.
Hardware solution with caveats for you (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hardware solution with caveats for you (Score:1)
Re:Hardware solution with caveats for you (Score:2)
1) Despite any gripes below, it does what it says it will do flawlessly.
2) Virtual floppy can only be used for booting and operating systems that access the floppy via INT 13 (basically DOS unless somebody out there has a *nix INT 13 hack - don't even think about Win NT/2K/XP).
3) Requires one additional IP address, switch port per machine (and associated cabling, etc).
4) As far as I know it only works with Compaq Proliant servers (but I'd love to hear from somebody with other experience).
5) Graphical remote control sucks ass (sssslllooooowwww, even over a LAN), but it can get you to where you can use VNC / PCAnywhere / SSH / Windows Remote Console, etc.
You also left out that it has the ability to power-off / power-on / cold-boot the server.
Despite the above qualms, I spec them in all critical servers because they're the only way (short of true KVM over IP) to completely remotely troubleshoot a crashed server. By that I mean full access during the boot process, the ability to see a BSOD (or other OS equic) screen live, and the ability to control the OS boot through a text and / or graphical startup process. In fact, for a remote (colo, etc) Win2K server, I usually leave the Win2K CD in the drive, and a floppy disk with any special RAID / HDD drivers in the floppy drive. From there I can literally do a complete OS reinstall by remote control (of course, it would be nice if all of my server software ran on OSes that don't require occasional reinstalls, but that's another story).
PC Weasel -- open source product (Score:1, Redundant)
You want www.realweasel.com, and the PC Weasel 2000.
It's open source, it's got a picture of a weasel with an axe standing next to headless (bleeding) Linux Tux and BSD Beastie, and it's from a company called Middle Digital Incorporated. You have to support that if you're a true geek.
Re:PC Weasel -- open source product (Score:1)
Sneaker Net (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, why not? (Score:3, Informative)
Neither is cheap (GSX is the cheaper of the two and runs $3500, $1600 academic [creationengine.com]) but if you can consolidate your boxes into one big box it might be worth it. After all, it's always good to centralize your points of failure, right?
Big thumbs up for VMware.
Simple answer... (Score:3, Informative)
But given that non-PC hardware is probably not an option for you, then consider something like the RealWeasel, although I've heard mixed reports about it from those that have tried it. The online demo looks like it should at least be usable, though.
Re:Simple answer... (Score:2)
Re:Simple answer... (Score:1)
Re:Simple answer... (Score:5, Funny)
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:Simple answer... (Score:2)
Compaq Alpha, HP PowerPC/PA-RISC, IBM RS/AS *, et al.
Re:You did not answer his question (Score:2)
Nope. I can do everything with my Suns at a remote location that I could do if they were sitting on my desk. Tell me what you can do with a KVM that I can't already do now. If a KVM is a superset of what I have now, what am I missing? The serial console gives me complete access to the machine at a low level, and a network transparent window system (X11) gives me access to the GUI. What more do I need? What more would a KVM give me? As far as I can see, nothing. Note that these machines don't even have a video card, nor do they need one. PC hardware only comes with a video card because Windows is too braindead to be usable without one, which is one of the reasons why KVMs exist in the first place.
why not serial console (Score:1)
bt878s with a gateway running ffserver (Score:2, Interesting)
That'll let you see the whole boot process including doing bios stuff.
Then run ffserver (ffmpeg, or maybe ffpegrec which is part of nvrec) on this gateway machine to encode and serve up divx5 video streams.
You can add security with freeswan and certificates if you like.
This can all be done using linux fairly easily. The major drawback would be the limit on PCI slots for capture cards. There are cheap Viewcast cards that have 3 inputs you can switch between so you could get at least 15 channels.(just not all at the same time)
You'd need a control channel aswell i guess.. maybe you could get a keyboard switch and write a little script to let you pipe your keyboard actions to whichever machine you want.
Not any time soon... (Score:3, Interesting)
You may want to consider an alternative approach (which is what I have been doing ever since the remote KVM sticker shock faded) which obviates the need for a remote KVM at all.
For example:
1. All systems boot from custom CD-R (good for security too) which then boots the remainder off a network drive or perhaps hdd.
2. Remote power cycling (cheap, $100 for 8 ports you can controll over IP) is used to power cycle one or more machines to force a reboot.
3. If you need to reimage the OS, simply replace the OS stored on the boot server, or have the CDROM boot image reimage remotely when given a specific trigger (this is the area wide open for all kinds of solutions. Luckily, all software based using linux and cheap CDR's, network filesytems, etc)
This still has a number of drawbacks. If the machine doesnt come back, there is no remote KVM access to tell you what the bios is complaigning about (bad disk?).
The bootup process is cumbersome. I.e. you need to always boot from CDR to be able to reimage a system later (dedicated hosting) and such.
Re:Not any time soon... (Score:2)
Re:Not any time soon... (Score:2)
I am the first to admit this is a hack, but I have no idea what you think will suddenly implode in such a setup. It is one thing to be kludge / hack, and another to be unrecoverably faulty.
Re:Not any time soon... (Score:2)
I guess I'm just thinking of the number of "money saving", "clever" kludges/hacks I've had to detangle and re-assemble or integrate with other environments. It's goes from either more complex than usual (when the kludger is around to explain/understand it) to a total nightmare (no kludger, no docs, serious tear-apart required).
Maybe I'm just not clever or I'm lazy, but I find KISS to be a sound principal...
Kaveman - ~$3500 (Score:1, Interesting)
Kaveman from Digital V6 [digitalv6.com]
They also have models with integrated KVM's for more, but I didn't inquire about the price of those, and they don't put prices on their web page.
Here is a per server solution that is cheap. (Score:2, Informative)
1. Get a weasle card for each server you have.
2. Get a Clysdale terminal server, or plug the serial into a Linux box and ssh to that system and use minicom....
This may or may not work for windows. Windows won't let you use the weasle as primary video, but if you can add an AGP card to the system for windows and the weasle card for BIOS.... Make sure winblows gets the primary display setup for the AGP card....
This is pure conjecture and you are responsible for any purchases and headaches caused by the preceeding!
Re:Here is a per server solution that is cheap. (Score:1)
http://www.realweasel.com/products.html
Re:Here is a per server solution that is cheap. (Score:3, Funny)
Uh, don't you mean Cyclades? I think someone needs a beer...
Re:Here is a per server solution that is cheap. (Score:2)
I was with you up until the Clysdale/Livinsgton. The nullmodem-in-*nix box too... but minicom? Yech!
Real serial terminal diehards go for either tip/cu or Kermit [columbia.edu]. Minicom has crappy terminal emulation (especially when dealing with Sun serial console, for example). cu/tip might not play nice with ssh, because the break sequence for cu/tip is the same as in ssh, but that just depends on implementation. Kermit just works everyhere, and anywhere. And it's free too! wow...
Just a tip from a fellow admin with systems on serial console. Ditch that minicom abberation. Heck, even seyon is better.
And, oh yeah, to still stay ontopic, newer intel 1u servers usually have that feature that the bios can be altered/monitored/whatever across the serial port too.
Otherwise, if they're big mighty compaqs, give Compaq Insight a go. It saved me from getting up from bed when I was stuck in the hotel with a 56 Kbit modem connection and someting important decided to crash. I fixed it all remote from the SSL web-interface from my hotel bed. I was done in a short while, and I got to go back to sleep again. Very good. Compaq saved my lusers from a cranky and sleepdeprived sysadmin.
I've seen it demoed (Score:2)
They even had software tools to re-sample a big display (eg, 1600x1200) down to a more managable size (eg, 1024x768) without losing usability.
They lost me due to (1) licensing costs for the management client based on per-machine, (2) it was real dodgy whether it was usable on a DSL-type broadband connection, (3) it was REAL expensive, even if you "waved" the extra client licensing costs (as the salesdude suggested I do).
I hope this kind of tech becomes more common and cheaper to do; it looked like a hardware-based video capture engine and a client application to decompress the video.
They sell them here... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They sell them here... (Score:1)
It may use the same cable as a network, but your router is going to have fits if you plug it into it!
Re:They sell them here... (Score:1)
Sorta OT (Score:1, Offtopic)
VGA - RS232 card (Score:1)
some motherboards have serial (Score:1)
most (all ) intel serverboards support serial (i know its not AMD but hey, i dont make all the choices) and if you have windows you can just call back to vnc when the logon screen comes up (you can do that right, i remeber someone saying that you cant run stuff while loggin it
-rev
Cheap Terminal Server (Score:1)
Re:Cheap Terminal Server (Score:3, Informative)
Is this possible??? (Score:1)
MegaRAC-G2 (Score:2, Informative)
That said, the MegaRAC-G2 sounds similar to what you want. It's not really a KVM switch (although you might see one from us in the future), but it is a great remote access card. It does very fast video redirection (10-15 fps) of the server's native display - which means it works on the console, in bios, in X, Windows, whatever. It redirects the client's keyboard/mouse activity, and even cdrom and floppy drives if you want.
It does a lot of other cool stuff too, check out the website: http://www.ami.com/megarac/
Oh yeah, and the card runs linux, and requires no drivers on the server.
Compaq Remote Insight (Score:3, Informative)
Low Tech Solution (Score:1)
WTI CMS-8 (Score:1)
http://www.wti.com/cms8.htm [wti.com]
It's a little pricier ($995), but if you couple this bad boy with a RealWeasel card in each box, you have an end-to-end solution to make a geek proud.
(it's also Sun ready, for your non-PC needs)
'Ask Slashdot' has taught me something. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Right Way involves spending a little more money up front, but its benefits are manyfold: A proven solution, vendor support, reliability, stability, and various and sundry other good things.
The Slashdot Way involves duct tape, bailing wire, and, sometimes, a 386 running RedHat. Its generally insignificant up-front savings are offset by the countless hours of configuration, tuning, tweaking, prodding, poking, and general lackluster performance of the contraption in question.
You have chosen to go The Slashdot Route. I wish you luck as you set up your TV cards and serial ports. You will need as much luck as you can get, and an awful lot of patience.
- A.P.
Totally Wrong Dude (Score:2, Funny)
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:Totally Wrong Dude (Score:3, Funny)
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.
You do, too! I've been watching your talking and typing recently. It is I who doesn't usually talk this way.Re:'Ask Slashdot' has taught me something. (Score:2, Interesting)
You could build special PCI cards that have all of these KMV connectors, and you can purchase as many cards as you need. Even use PCI riser cards to add more slots than the motherboard already has. Would be even nice if each card had the power to take the VGA video and convert to digital, and compress the image. Perhaps even make cards that can handle more than just one KMV input. Probably would have to make special 3-in-1 connector cables.
Would be a gawd awful rats nest behind that unit!!!!
Video compression should not be a MPEG format, since there's not much motion/animation going on with a desktop (unless you feel like playing quake 3), plus it would end up looking blurry with artifices >sp?. It would be nice if it were clear to read, at a normal frame rate so scrolling won't look screwy.
It's possible we could ignore analog VGA video, and use pure digital input from a DV-out used for a flat screen. Then just compress the data on the fly as it's pumped over IP. Doubt many servers have newer video cards with Digital output... Unless you used some old matrox cards that used some funky DB-15 port for some sort of digital output.
That's the only hurdle I can think of, the KMV connections into the box. Dealing with the VGA video would be another hurdle, but I don't think it would be that difficult to figure out. KB/Mouse input would be a no brainer.
Re:'Ask Slashdot' has taught me something. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, this doesn't make for "The Right Way". Hacking at something - figuring out how it works, seeing how you can do it better (or less expensively), and enjoying the process - is the source of solutions that Just Work.
"[G]eneral lackluster performance of the contraption in question" is the result of not understanding something enough to do it well. Many off-the-shelf solutions suck - Windows 98, anyone? So do many home-brew setups. The problems doesn't come from the nature of a rig, it comes from the effort and intelligence of the creator.
If you prefer to not think about things, and just have them work, fine - but don't disparage people who are interested in learning and improving with sweeping and inaccurate generalities about DYI projects. Most of your "proven solutions" only got to that point because enough people (or sometimes, one intelligent person) was willing to hack at something until they were satified.
End of rant.
The issue is the "when" of the hacker, not the way (Score:2)
The true master knows when to use the correct approach. Calling either one a cop out or wasted effort isn't the way to go.
In this case, I think you would want to go with a more "off the shelf" solution" and direct your hacking energies towards the machines that are actually being run. Instead of spending a week tweaking a home made KVM over IP solution you could purchase something and use that week to tweak the servers and maybe consolidate a box or two.
Remember, at the end of the day you have to evaluate the priorities and direct your energies. Having a really cool home-brew KVM solution will not improve your overall system. Having a really well tweaked set of servers will.
Good, but wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Generally, in my experience, it's the source of solutions that Almost Work. Or solutions that Work Unless You Do This. Or solutions that Just Worked Last Week, What the Hell Did We Change That Broke It?
"[G]eneral lackluster performance of the contraption in question" is the result of not understanding something enough to do it well. Many off-the-shelf solutions suck - Windows 98, anyone? So do many home-brew setups. The problems doesn't come from the nature of a rig, it comes from the effort and intelligence of the creator.
No, the problem comes from the continual poor reinvention of the wheel on Ask Slashbots. In this situation, KVM-IP switches are the answer. Not a 486 with a bunch of TV cards in it. Not a rat's nest of cables. If this person worked for me and proposed this solution, I would have a hard time signing his checks from then on.
- A.p.
Re:'Ask Slashdot' has taught me something. (Score:2)
Yes... but when he's done he'll have a clue... (Score:3, Insightful)
A few years down the road and most of us will want to hire the experimenter who has tried several different OSes, hacked out a wireless network out of a couple 2-meter transceivers, set up two 486 DX66 boxes as a dedicated VPN between his bedroom and his girlfriend's house, and wired up the girl's locker room with x10. Those are the guys who can think their way through a problem rather than hitting the catalogs looking for a million dollar solution.
'Real' vs /. (Score:2, Interesting)
The 'Real' way actually amounts to mundane unimaginative and stagnant. At worst it amounts to millions of servers on an IP near you being adminstrated by lazy incompetant boobs, who don't know any better than to call a 'Real' technician (read
BB -Guanno
Re:'Ask Slashdot' has taught me something. (Score:2)
Re:'Ask Slashdot' has taught me something. (Score:2)
Blackbox KVM Ethernet Extenders/Hubs (Score:1, Interesting)
Blackbox Ethernet KVM Equipment [blackbox.com]
Forgive the javascript errors, this was the only way to link to that exact page on the blackbox site.
Buy Compaq.... (Score:2)
Re:Buy Compaq.... (Score:2)
Rose Electronics remote KVM (Score:3, Interesting)
We're going to plug the Ultralink into our cascaded KVM tree and hope for the best. Initially looking at the unit, I have some gripes:
* No distributed authentication. It's gotta be local accounts. Can't hit my LDAP, NIS, NT Domain, or RADIUS servers.
* Client is a proprietary Win32 app. No JAVA, no browser. Cripes, not even ActiveX!
* Only one user at a time... including console. You have to log into the console to gain access (crappy for CEs out to fix a problem), and if the CE stays logged in, guess what? You can't access it remotely! We had to plug it into our intelligent PDU so we could remotely hard boot it if that happened.
* We have what must be version
Aside from these (minor) flaws, I think we'll be OK. Anything is better than booking a last-minute 606 mile flight to reboot a Windows box that shows 'It is now safe to power off your computer' because PCNowhere admin chose the wrong logoff choice. [don't laugh] (Although, there is Buckhead...)
What did it cost? (Score:3, Insightful)
It worked well, but REALLY expensive for a 16 port version. Expensive to the tune of around $10k for the box, the auth server module, and 2-3 client licenses. I was most turned off by the fact that the server and client software were $old $eperately, since the software is useless without the hardware.
I read a USENET post (circa 11/2001) that said the devices were buggy and the vendor was an asshole about other platform clients and future development/changes.
I think digitized video and IP KVM connectivity is probably not a fluke and represents the "future" of KVM, but vendors will need to seriously get their shit together in terms of client access and pricing otherwise computer makers are just going to crush this product with their own built-in remote management. All our HP servers have built-in serial management that can do power on/off/reboot, environment management, and text/keyboard redirection; HP and Compaq both have boards that can do it natively over IP, the *only* thing missing is the ability to do transparent video redirection. When they do that, KVM will be obsoleted by a laptop running a redirection client.
Am I missing the point?? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've found that having the ability to remote power cycle (preferably through an interface -- but an ISP that can get someone to the box fast can do in a $ pinch) + some remote network admin tools (VNC, Terminal Services, Telnet/SSH, etc etc) goes a *long* way.
Yes, once in a while the box crashes *so* hard that Terminal services/VNC (assuming a Windows platform) becomes useless -- time for a reboot! The only way that you can really screw yoursel is if you mess with the network settings and configure yourself off the network.
Rather than spend $$$s for that possibility, why not just pick up the phone and call some hands-on support (or if it is your datacenter.. send in the geeks)...?? If you know you are going to be messing with "dangerous" settings, you should be prepared for these sorts of possibilities anyways..
Just my $.02...
I guess he reboots often... (Score:2)
Re:Am I missing the point?? (Score:2)
Even so, it is often times possible to plan around those sorts of things -- for example -- temporarily re-enable telnet on the back network so you can make a connection if the SSH server fails.... or make sure you have serial access to the console..
I know it isn't a "perfect fix" -- and maybe I've just been "lucky" -- but I've survived for years w/o a IP KVM, and I'm just not sure that the tech is worth the $s in many cases
Combo (Score:2)
The Cost of your Time VS. Cost of a good KVM Switc (Score:2)
See my Linux Journal article on the subject (Score:3, Informative)
I know it's not exactly what the poster asked for, but I was in the same boat about 6 months ago and you can at least step through my thought processes.
Article linked here [linuxjournal.com].
Re:Well (Score:2, Funny)
Re:For God's sake...WHY? (Score:1)
Re:Rebooting? Whats that? (Score:3, Funny)
Just out of curiousity, what is your IP address?
- A.P.
Re:Pretty simple setup... not so $$$ (Score:2, Informative)
See also http://www.kvmswitchoverip.com/ [kvmswitchoverip.com] and http://www.kvm-switches-online.com/remote-access-s ervers.html [kvm-switches-online.com] for other solutions. I think these guys both have Raritans which haven't been mentioned yet.
Nothing low-end, though, you'll have to roll your own with a PC Weasel [realweasel.com] ($250-$250/server) and a remote machine you can SSL to and then use as a serial terminal for the PC Weasels. You'd need a multi-port COM card for the SSL box as well, and you'll have to disable any onboard video to let the weasel control the servers.