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
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
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!
http://www.realweasel.com/intro.html
There's a giant need for this, cheaper. If someone can come up with a 1U KVM over IP box under $2000 USD they'd make a killing in the SME market.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Hmm. You can see the BIOS on reboot using ssh? What are you doing, running ssh in ROM?
Many newer motherboards support BIOS redirection over the serial port. All of my systems (intel 440gx) supports this. It allows full remote BIOS configuration, etc. Used in conjuction with linux's serial console and sysrq over serial I find the solution works quite well.
- U
this link (which slashdot will probably munge: http://cyberguys.com/cgi-bin/sgin0101.exe?UID=2002 080514403159&GEN6=00&GEN9=5CG01&FNM=00&T1=104+1150 &UREQA=1&UREQB=2&UREQC=3&UREQD=4
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...
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
how about this (two sources): http://www.bsdmall.com/console.html,
http://www.realweasel.com/pcivga.html.
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Raritan has some nice CAT5 based KVM solutions, that work terribly well in scaling between small and large environments. However I think the price may be a bit higher then you were hoping.
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"
A pair of Nikes cost less than $500 (but only just). That's about as close as you're gonna get.
This probably isn't exactly what you were looking for, but I would consider and maybe request an eval of VMware GSX Server or maybe even ESX Server. Both let you monitor the virtual machine over IP -- in fact, there's even a web-based administration interface. And, of course, you can watch BSODs as they happen, hit the reset button using your toolbar, and go into the BIOS setup utility remotely.
Neither is cheap (GSX is the cheaper of the two and runs $3500, $1600 academic) 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.
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.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
This looks like a cool product but would work IF and ONLY IF you only need a console. no mouse, no GUI, no XMMS :`( From the post I am guessing that he needs a mouse and a GUI (XMMS or Winamp optional).
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!
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How about putting cheapo tvout cards in all the servers, and connecting them all to a dedicated pc that has like 5 bt878 capture cards. (short svideo cables)
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.
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.
Another poster pointed me in this direction....
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!
We use VNC here at work over 10/100 at those specs with no issue whatsoever. Hell, I use IBM's Desktop on Call over a 56k Connection without any fuss. Your issue is a non-issue.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
That requires a MUCH larger desk :P And what if it was on a rack?
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
WrightLine was selling Avocents for a while. They were expensive and required a server and client component in addition to the hardware, but were real slick -- total KVM over IP.
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.
http://www.minicom.com/specter.htm
Disclaimer: I work for AMI on the MegaRAC-G2
:)
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.
Andrew
I just picked up a few Compaq Remote Insight boards on ebay for about nine dollars each. Seems to be a good system as it allows remote power on and access even after a power outage thanks ot a battary backup.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Oh yeah...now I remember...I "rebooted" last month. Never again.
Just out of curiousity, what is your IP address?
- 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?"
Did this: Bought a Cyclades 8-port serial board and stuffed it into a P133. Load $FreeOS and $Term_Program and go at it. Keep in mind that consoled-devices that don't deal well with a serial BREAK may not like it if/when you reboot the console server box. There are usually hardware or software ways around this.
Why would you need anything more than a console? After the machine is booted up beyond the BIOS/etc, you can use the features of X or VNC to do whatever you want with a GUI. There is no need for it.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
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?"
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.)
Buy Compaq (I mean HP!) servers and add the Remote Lights Out board. It works very well and their new servers have them built-in. You get BIOS level control with full remote access via a web browser.
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...
Evolution: love it or leave it
If you're satisfied with your current solution for monitoring the bios, why not just add VNC (or something similar)? Monitor the bios with your current setup during bootup, then switch to VNC once that's done.
Seeing as he runs windows, this is probably a good guess.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
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!
Love their attitude:
"What sucks." "How we fixed it." "Why we're swell." "Asses saved."
I am not sure if you are doing this for work or not. But you may want to keep in mind while looking at all these solutions even if the hardware cost under $50 to make a portible switch how much time will it take you. Lets assume you are making $25 an hour so if it takes 2 more hours to configure the hardware then that is an aditional $50. Of couse the cheaper the hardware solution the more time it will probably take to put it together. So if you spend a Week tring to get this to work you are probably wasing more money then it would have cost to bye a KVM switch.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You applied the latest kernel security patch from your villa on the Mediterranean. It (the patch, that is) broke your Foozbit Gigabit ethernet, and now X/VNC/whatever is useless. You now have to cut your vacation short and say goodbye to the ladies on the nude beach, fly back and fix it yourself.
;)
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.
This is the best available solution I have heard so far.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
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.
See also http://www.kvmswitchoverip.com/ and http://www.kvm-switches-online.com/remote-access-s ervers.html 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 ($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.
"A gun is a tool, Marian. No better, no worse than any other tool. An axe, a shovel, or anything." Shane (1953)
so you were applying kernel patches on a nude beach?
:)
I think it is you who is mistaken...
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
If it weren't for adventurous spirits who are willing innovate a home made solution, the computer industry would never have gotten as far as it has, or be going in such interesting and potentially rewarding directions.
/. fan) when the innevitable problems occur. And the rest of us suffer greatly for it. I wouldn't pay someone any more than minimum wage to do things the 'Real' way.
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
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.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Sometimes a problem should be solved using efficiency and pre-created/existing tools. Sometimes the "let's hack this" mentality is appropriate.
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.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
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?"