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Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 20:22:56 +0100
From: Bruce M Simpson <bms@spc.org>
To: Bill Moran <wmoran@potentialtech.com>
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cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
cc: Pete French <petefrench@ticketswitch.com>
Subject: Re: Newbie Question About System Update
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On Mon, Apr 25, 2005 at 02:41:47PM -0400, Bill Moran wrote:
> This might be the only real advantage of a serial console.  The unit you
> pointed to is ~$4000.00, whereas 16-port serial console units run more
> like $1000.00.

Then again it's possible to build terminal servers with ssh capabilities
using off-the-shelf hardware and open source software for anything from
$200-$400.

Depending on how exotic you wish to get, however. For example; IBM have
embedded RFB (that's something of an alias for VNC) in their management
controllers for a few years now; these talk to the management processors
(PowerPC 4xx family) in an xSeries cluster over an RS488 serial bus, which
in turn are able to sniff PCI VGA accesses to give you true remote KVM.

But I agree with the original point that was made about colo and remote
management -- if you can't fit remote management into a colo situation,
your management costs will increase far more if things go wrong.

Regards,
BMS