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."
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KVM over IP is going to be costly into the near future. This isn't exactly commodity hardware, so it may stay high for a looong time.
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.
http://www.minicom.com/specter.htm
We have a semi-large farm of Windose Boxen at a lights-out colo (Frontend application servers to most of the UNIX boxen). We just picked up the Rose Electronics Ultralink for remote management. We need this so we can do remote diags, like troubleshoot hardware, view POST, etc. We have Cyclades for the *NIX boxen, and our HP Netservers have the serial 'management' console that other people are boasting about, but that just won't cut it in a real-world production environment. A Console is a Console and a serial port is a serial port.
.99a ... we had to wait about 2 months to get it, and we must have been the first guinea pig to take shipment. I'm afraid to open it up to see if there is about 35 feet of spaghetti-wire patches.
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...)
How often do you really need "true console" access on a box that has no network connectivity?
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...
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