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WinVNC vs. KVM Extender?

Posted by Cliff on from the network-software-vs-hardware dept.

systmc asks: "I'm trying to decide between using WinVNC or a KVM extender at a customer's site. I'd like to use WinVNC but I'm concerned about it's CPU usage on a WinNT system (with an inactive client connected CPU usage was at around 8%, even with Raw encoding. PCAnywhere was about 0.5%). Does anyone have experience tweaking VNC? If hardware winds up being necessary, what KVM Extender would you recommend?"

1 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Compaq remote Insight Lights-Out Edition. by kbyrd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Somebody mentioned the trouble with VNC for remote administration, if the PC isn't working then VNC may not be up either. KVM's don't suffer from this. But they're distance limited. Compaq makes a product that gives the best of both worlds. It's a PCI card for the "controlled" PC. It hooks into the video, keyboard, mouse, and power. It has it's own power supply and NIC in it. It gives you a KVM-like control over TCP/IP. You control it via java and a web browser. A company I used to work for deployed these in several hundred servers that were located all over the U.S. It got us out of jams where VNC or a KVM would not.