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."
Slashdot Mirror
What kinda bandwidth are we talking to transmit say a 1024x768x256 colors (to save bandwidth) screen at a decent frame rate? Hope you have Gigabit Ethernet to run this decently!
Check out Raritan. They have a wide range of such products. Not sure about prices though.
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy"
Namely this: There are two ways to do things: The right way, and the Slashdot way.
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.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It may use the same cable as a network, but your router is going to have fits if you plug it into it!
WHY DO PEOPLE DO THIS ??!!??
We had a KVM extender that used CAT5 to connect the remote box to the box in the server room.
Nice feature: If you pay attention to what you are doing, you can use the cable that you already pulled to connect these things.
Sucky feature: Sooner or later someone will connect the KVM connector box to the wrong port in the wall, and fry the box. (it probably won't do your router too much good either) (it didn't take us too long)
This is exactly what murphy was talking about when he came up with that law of his.
It doesn't seem fair, but any piece of equipment with a CAT5 cable on it that can't deal with being plugged into an IP router w/o blowing itself or the router should be destroyed immediatly.
which is more than most of the "buy it off the shelf" people often have. The advantages to experimentation are many. While time savings is probably not one of them (at least in the short run) by the time the project is done, the experimenter has a better idea of how to go about getting things done than the buy-it-off-the-shelf guy.
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.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Sure... I feel like walking 30 miles to a remote site to fix a minor problem. You fucking idiot!!!!! Get a clue!! This guy is asking the /. community for help/solution. You people recommend VNC, HELLO.... did ya read the article the guy posted!!! He wants to to be able to enter the BIOS or SCSI controllers to set/change/troubleshoot problems. IDIOTS!!IDIOTS!!IDIOTS!!IDIOTS!!IDIOTS!!IDIOTS!!ID IOTS!!IDIOTS!!IDIOTS!!IDIOTS!!IDIOTS!!IDIOTS!!IDIO TS!!IDIOTS!!IDIOTS!!IDIOTS!!IDIOTS!!IDIOTS!!IDIOTS !!IDIOTS!!
We got a demo of an Avocent unit that did the same thing. It did have a centralized user database capability (unfortunately I think it was like Windows domain auth or something less flexible than RADIUS/LDAP/TACACS+).
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.
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.
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.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"