On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 05:42:02PM -0500, Scot Jenkins wrote: > On 5/25/05, Dan Rue <drue at therub.org> wrote: > > I'm moving half a dozen servers to a new colo.. the old colo had KVMs > > set up, but the new place doesn't. Since all of our servers are *nix, i > > figured i should be able to set up serial access to them all for much > > cheaper and more featureful (remote access!) than KVMs. > > > > Anyone have good product suggestions or advise for such a configuration? > > I've never set up serial access before, and don't really know where to > > start.. > > I've worked with Cyclades[1] TS series console servers. The devices > are usually 1U rack mountable with a bunch of RJ45 ports (8, 16, 24, > 32 port models, possibly others). Use straight ethernet cables to a > RJ45-to-DB9 or DB25 serial connector. The TS series allowed you to > telnet or ssh to the Cyclades device and then you can connect to a > specific console port via telnetting/sshing to localhost:port. It > worked pretty well but they can be spendy. > > I've also worked with an older multi-port serial card (also Cyclades). > Those tend to be a nightmare as you add more devices, you end up with > an octopus of cabling. I'll dig up my pictures of how NOT to set this > up... > > If you only have a few devices, you might look at a USB-to-Serial type > of device if your hardware will support it. > > If you have the luxury to "try before you buy", do so. Some of these > devices can be goofy and for serial access, you definitely want > something reliable. > > As far as the OS side of things, it depends on what flavor of *nix > you're dealing with. Solaris supports serial console by default if > you don't have a keyboard plugged in (use serial port A). Linux and > FreeBSD can be quite easily configured for serial access. There is a > Serial HOWTO for Linux and the FreeBSD handbook is indespensible. > > Let us know what you end up using. > > [1] http://www.cyclades.com/ Thanks Scot very interesting. I'm seeing lots of such devices like the Cyclades TS that just run linux internally and have a bunch of serial ports. Looks like for 8 ports they start at about $700 and go up quickly. So I think i'm looknig for a clean multi-port config. I found this device by doing a google search, and it looks perfect: http://www.digital-loggers.com/ss20.html What do you think? At least that would scale for the whole rack.. where as if i had to buy something more expensive i'd cheap out and just get an 8 port which may or may not be sufficient in 2 years. Set that up from one server connecting to all others. Then set up one of the others to access the first directly. If the firewall goes down i'm still SOL. So i guess just make the firewall the main guy and forget that secondary connection. Still better than KVM only - in which case if any machine went down i had to drive downtown. By the way, all boxes are freebsd (don't stone me! i've run linux.. uhh, before..) Dan