Does such a system exist?

[S P Arif Sahari Wibowo]

On Tue, 18 Aug 2009, Robert Brockway wrote:
> 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.

That's definitely something to think about. The 'out of band' 
mechanism may need its own security.

Actually, sometime ago I was discussing something like this for 
a low-budget non-profit installation, where KVM over IP is a bit 
too expensive. I had an idea that - since each server in this 
installation has 2 serial port - that we can chain those servers 
on the serial port; so for example machine A's 1st serial port 
connect to machine B's 2nd serial port, machine B's 1st serial 
port connect to machine C's 2nd serial port, ans so on until it 
cycle back to A. Each server is setup to have BIOS & kernel 
console through serial port, monitored by the next machine in 
the chain. So, theoretically, if at least one server still up, 
and none of the server have problems that need hardware or 
physical intervention, then one can use the server that still up 
to get the next server working, and so on until all servers are 
up.

Security just need to be setup in each machine to control who 
has access to the serial port.

Never actually got around to implement it, though; but seems 
possible, what do you think?

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