Does such a system exist?

[Robert Brockway]

On Mon, 17 Aug 2009, teddy mills wrote:

> 1. connect a keyboard cable to every server I have (400+)
>   and be able to send a CTRL-ALT-DELETE to it.
>   This would only reboot working and network ready servers.
>   (kernel panics, powered off servers etc would not help)
>
> 2. If that does not help, then do a motherboard PW/RESET.

As others have noted there are many options on the PCs.  A lot of vendors 
have proprietary solutions available on servers.  All the ones I'm aware 
of work fine with Linux to give you a 'serial console' which can be access 
when the network is down.

It is possible to get an OS level serial console on Linux (and has been 
for 10+ years) without BIOS level support or any hardware other than a 
serial or usb port and the cables.  The disadvantage to this option is 
that a true power cycle isn't an option and you can't access the BIOS.

Some sort of remote console access is essential for remote boxes that you 
actually want to be able to fix.

PCs are actually unusual in that they do not all come with a serial 
console out of the box.  Hardware designed for *nix or any non-Microsoft 
OS has had this as standard for 30 years or more.

Whichever way you go - KVM, serial console or whatever - be very careful 
about who can access it.  The 'out of band' management cuts around all of 
the security you have in place on your regular network.

Rob

-- 
I tried to change the world but they had a no-return policy
Projected IPv4 exhaustion: http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists